Advertising unreasonable expectations: Nanny ads on Craigslist

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that while some domestic workers in the United States work in situations that are fair and decent, many others face conditions of abuse, degradation, and/or exploitation. These conditions are commonly seen as a “hidden” aspect of domestic work. This article asks if these conditions are really as hidden as is commonly assumed. Through a content analysis of nanny ads on Craigslist, we explore whether employers are willing to advertise their expectation that nannies will work under one of three unreasonable conditions: i.e., for low pay, long daily hours, and/or long weekly hours. Overall, we find that of the ads that specify how much pay a nanny is expected to work for as well as how long she is expected to work, many contain unreasonable expectations. By looking at how these expectations are expressed in these ads, we can see that these unreasonable expectations are generally presented in a matter-of-fact manner. This suggests that these employers do not find these expectations to be that remarkable, notwithstanding how unreasonable they are.

Notes

¹Craigslist has over one million jobs listed on it each month (Craigslist n.d.b).

²It is possible for users to flag specific advertisements as being inappropriate and/or illegal. In theory this mechanism could prevent advertisements containing extremely unreasonable expectations from being posted on this website. As such, if we were to find ads with unreasonable or even illegal expectations of nannies, this means that no one found these expectations inappropriate enough to flag them.

³A handful of ads were listed as full-time positions and offered a weekly/monthly salary, but did not state how many hours a nanny was expected to work per day/week. In these cases we assumed that a nanny worked 40 hours per week (i.e., a “standard” workweek) and from this calculated a nanny’s hourly wage. None of the ads that we calculated wages for in this manner were low paying as defined below.

⁴In some cases a nanny’s hourly wage, expected daily hours, and/or expected weekly hours were listed as a range in an advertisement (e.g., a nanny’s pay would be listed as between $8 and $9 per hour). In these cases, we took the midpoint of a given range (e.g., if a nanny’s pay was listed as being between $8 and $9 per hour, we would record her pay as being $8.50 per hour).

⁵LLSIL thresholds are listed as yearly incomes. In order to convert these figures to an hourly wage, we divided the yearly income thresholds by 2080 (i.e., by the number of hours an individual would work if they worked 40 hours per week for all 52 weeks of a year).

⁶The city of San Francisco has its own minimum wage which, in 2012, was $10.24. Thus, this is higher than California’s minimum wage, but lower than the low income threshold used here.

⁷Note: all ads are quoted exactly as they were expressed in an advertisement. This means we did not correct any obvious spelling or grammatical mistakes found in ads.

⁸If this nanny were to live-out, thus losing the value of the room offered to her, her wage would be $3.57 per hour.

⁹In fact, none of the ads that expected long days of a nanny mentioned that she would have, or could take, any rest periods/breaks while working (in fact, only two ads in our entire sample mentioned that nannies would have time where they could take breaks during the day).

¹⁰It is also interesting to note that this ad specifically stated that that it would not provide benefits as part of its compensation package (Los Angeles: 12/18/ 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Craig D. Lair

Craig D. Lair is an Assistant Professor at Gettysburg College. His interests include economic sociology, the sociology of work, and social theory.

Chad MacLeod

Chad MacLeod is a graduate of Gettysburg College (2014) where he received his B.A. in Sociology. He now works as a Client Services Associate and Data Intake Specialist for a health data management and analytics firm based in Portland, Maine.

Ethan Budgar

Ethan Budgar is a graduate of Gettysburg College (2014) where he received his B.A. in Sociology. He currently works for CEB as a Research Analyst.