Yes, nannies typically get paid vacation, though no federal law requires it. The industry standard for a full-time position is ten paid vacation days per year (two work weeks), plus at least six paid holidays and a few paid sick days on top. Whether a particular nanny is entitled to paid time off comes down to three things: your state’s labor laws, what you put in the written employment agreement, and what competitive pay looks like where you live.
What the Law Actually Requires
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require any employer, household employers included, to pay workers for time not worked. Vacation, sick days, and holidays are all outside its scope, which is limited to minimum wage and overtime.1U.S. Department of Labor. Vacations A family could legally hire a nanny with zero paid vacation and not run afoul of federal law.
State law is a different story. About a dozen states have passed some form of a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, including New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Protections vary, but common provisions include a guaranteed 24-hour rest day each week and, in some states, a small number of paid days off after a year of continuous employment with the same household.
Separately, more than 20 states plus the District of Columbia now mandate paid sick leave, and those laws generally cover domestic workers. Sick leave is a distinct obligation from vacation. You usually can’t fold sick leave into a general PTO bank and consider yourself covered, unless your state’s law explicitly permits a combined approach. If your state requires five paid sick days and you offer ten vacation days, the total is fifteen, not ten.
Before you draft a contract, check with your state labor department for the rules that apply to your household. Penalties for violating domestic worker protections vary but can include back pay and fines.
The Industry Standard for Full-Time Nannies
Ten paid vacation days per year is the benchmark that comes up consistently across nanny placement agencies, payroll services, and professional caregiver organizations. Some experienced nannies negotiate 15 days, particularly in high-cost metro areas or for demanding schedules, but ten is what most career nannies expect at a baseline. Offering less than that in a competitive market signals that the family treats the role as informal, and quality candidates will pass.
Paid holidays are a separate benefit. Most professional nanny positions include at least six:
- New Year’s Day
- Memorial Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Thanksgiving
- Christmas Day
Many families add Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or Juneteenth. If your nanny works on a paid holiday, the common practice is to pay time-and-a-half, though the FLSA only requires premium pay when the hours actually push the nanny past 40 worked in that week.
Three to five paid sick days per year are also standard, separate from both vacation and holidays. Where a state sick leave mandate applies, the legal minimum may already sit inside that range.
Guaranteed Hours Are Not Vacation Days
This is the distinction that trips up more families than any other part of nanny compensation. Guaranteed hours and paid vacation are two separate buckets, and confusing them creates resentment fast.
Guaranteed hours mean the nanny gets paid for their regular weekly schedule even when the family doesn’t need childcare. If you leave town for a week, work from home unexpectedly, or cancel a shift, the nanny still receives normal pay. You’re paying for availability, and under a guaranteed-hours arrangement the nanny remains on call if your plans change.
Paid vacation is time the nanny chooses to take off. It draws down the PTO balance, and the nanny is not expected to be available. The line between the two is who made the decision. If the family cancels, it’s guaranteed hours. If the nanny requests the days, it’s vacation.
The clean way to structure this is guaranteed hours as the baseline plus a separate bank of ten vacation days on top. Families who skip that structure often end up counting their own travel weeks against the nanny’s vacation balance, which means the nanny never gets a real break she chose for herself. Most professional nannies will not accept a position built that way.
Putting Vacation Into the Employment Agreement
Every nanny arrangement should have a written employment agreement, and the vacation section should answer a few specific questions. The U.S. Department of Labor publishes a sample nanny employment agreement with a dedicated leave section that works as a starting template.2U.S. Department of Labor. Employment Sample Agreement for Nannies
Decide whether the ten days are granted up front each year or accrued each pay period. Front-loading is simpler but leaves you exposed if the nanny leaves after using more days than they’ve earned. Accrual is more conservative but needs careful tracking.
Decide how the days get chosen. A common split is that the family picks one week (often to line up with their own travel) and the nanny picks the other. Whatever the split, write it down so there’s no confusion mid-year.
Set a notice period for vacation requests, usually two to four weeks. State whether unused days carry over into the next year or expire, and check your state’s law before writing a use-it-or-lose-it clause, because several states prohibit forfeiture of accrued vacation.
For part-time nannies, prorate the benefit based on hours rather than days. A nanny working 20 hours a week gets half the full-time hour allotment.
Payout for Unused Vacation at Termination
When the job ends, whether you owe the nanny for unused vacation depends on your state. Roughly 16 states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, and Nebraska among others, explicitly require employers to pay out accrued unused vacation at the employee’s final rate of pay. Several of those states allow a written policy to override the default, but without one, the payout is mandatory.
In states without a payout mandate, the written agreement controls. If it promises payout, you owe it. If it’s silent, most default rules lean toward no obligation, but silence is exactly what breeds disputes. Spelling out the payout policy costs nothing.
The math is simple: multiply the hourly rate by the accrued unused vacation hours. A nanny earning $25 an hour with 40 unused hours is owed $1,000 on top of the final paycheck. In states that mandate timely final payment, delays can trigger additional penalties calculated as a day’s wages for each day the payment is late.
Taxes and Overtime on Vacation Pay
Vacation pay is treated exactly like regular wages. Every dollar is subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes and counts toward the annual cash wage threshold that triggers household employer obligations. For 2026, that threshold is $3,000 in cash wages paid to a single household employee.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 926 (2026), Household Employer’s Tax Guide Any payout for unused vacation at termination is also wages subject to Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment (FUTA) taxes.4Internal Revenue Service. Employer’s Supplemental Tax Guide If you’re close to the $3,000 threshold, vacation pay can push you over it and trigger tax obligations on the full year’s wages, not just the amount above the line.
One overtime detail catches families off guard. Nannies who don’t live in are entitled to overtime at time-and-a-half for hours worked beyond 40 in a week.5U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 79D – Hours Worked Applicable to Domestic Service Hours paid as vacation do not count as hours actually worked for that overtime calculation.6U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 23 – Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA If the nanny works 32 hours Monday through Thursday and takes a paid vacation day Friday, that’s 40 hours of pay but only 32 worked, so no overtime is owed. You can choose to count vacation hours toward overtime as a matter of your own policy, but the FLSA does not require it.