The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) has been surveying Spanish-speaking domestic workers since March 2020 to track employment conditions and economic trends over time. This report analyzes survey data alongside worker testimonies to understand how and why conditions for domestic workers changed leading up to and during 2025.
Summary
- Following the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating impact on the domestic workforce, employment conditions recovered slowly and tenuously from 2020 to 2024, while difficulties affording housing, food, and other basic needs initially eased before resurging by the end of 2024.
- Employment and economic conditions worsened in 2025, marked by a sharp decline in Q3 (including record-high economic insecurity) and crisis levels that persisted in Q4.
- As workers increasingly struggled to find work and make ends meet, poor mental health spiked from an already alarming ~50% in Q1-Q3 2025 to 66% in Q4.
- Measures of employer-worker power dynamics also deteriorated with, for example, 20-21% of workers feeling very comfortable asking for a sick day in Q2-Q3 2025 versus just 9% in Q4.
- Worker testimonies gathered through other NDWA channels—paired with supporting survey data—highlighted widespread immigration-related fears and economic uncertainty in Spring 2025, escalating to acute economic strain, mental health burdens, and domestic labor market disruptions by Fall.
Read the Report