The 20% rule that ends casual babysitting

By Eric, KindHow founder · Last reviewed August 2026

The short answer

The Department of Labor’s regulation on “casual” babysitting permits some housework that isn’t childcare — dishes, a load of laundry — as long as it stays incidental to the job. Its own rule for “incidental” is a number: 20% of the hours worked on that assignment. sourcedGo past it, and the exemption that makes babysitting “casual” in the law’s eyes stops applying — not for future bookings, for that assignment, the one already in progress.

The rule, in its own words

29 CFR 552.5 defines babysitting “on a casual basis” as work that is “irregular or intermittent, and which is not performed by an individual whose vocation is babysitting.” It allows some non-childcare housework inside that definition, but caps it: sourced

“[S]ome household work... is not related to the care of children, [and] is permitted, so long as it is incidental, i.e., does not exceed 20 percent of the total hours worked on the particular babysitting assignment.”

29 CFR 552.104(c) closes the loop, stating what happens once that share is exceeded:

“[W]here the work performed... exceeds 20 percent of the total weekly hours worked, the exemption for ‘babysitting services on a casual basis’ does not apply during that workweek.”

Do the arithmetic on an ordinary Friday: a four-hour evening has a 20% ceiling of 48 minutes. Ask a sitter to also get the kitchen cleaned, run a load of laundry and walk the dog, and it is easy to clear 48 minutes without anyone intending anything unusual. house judgment— the 20% figure and the four-hour example are the regulation’s; converting it to minutes for a specific booking length is ours.

What actually changes when the exemption stops applying

Nothing about the money changes on the spot — most sitting rates already clear federal minimum wage by a wide margin, so that protection was never the binding one. What changes is that overtime exists at all: past 40 hours worked for the same family in a week, hours stop being casual babysitting and start being subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s time-and-a-half rule. sourcedFor a single evening that rarely bites — the exposure is real for a sitter working long, frequent weeks for one household, which is also usually the point at which “casual” was already a stretch.

The regulation actually runs on three separate tests, and the 20% housework share is only one of them. 29 CFR 552.104(b) also asks whether the arrangement is genuinely irregular — more than about 20 hours a week for the same family starts to look like a job rather than a favor — and 552.104(d) asks whether babysitting is the sitter’s vocation at all, which a full-time professional nanny fails regardless of hours. sourced All three run independently: failing any one of them is enough to take a booking outside the casual exemption.

What this doesn’t mean

• It doesn’t mean you can never ask a sitter to do anything else. The rule’s whole premise is that some incidental housework is fine — the line is a share of the clock, not a ban on any task beyond childcare.
• It isn’t the same test as the $3,000 household-employer threshold. That one is IRS Publication 926’s, runs on a calendar year of cash wages, and governs Social Security and Medicare tax rather than minimum wage and overtime. A booking can fail the 20% test on a single evening while the family is nowhere near the annual tax threshold, or clear the annual threshold while every individual evening stays well under 20%.
• It doesn’t retroactively reclassify a past evening.The test applies assignment by assignment (or workweek by workweek, under 552.104(c)’s own wording) — it isn’t a status that, once triggered, attaches to every future booking with the same sitter.

Sources

• 29 CFR 552.5 — Casual basis — the definition of casual babysitting and the 20% incidental-housework cap quoted above.
• 29 CFR 552.104 — Babysitting services performed on a casual basis — what happens past the 20% share, the weekly-hours test, and the vocation test.

Informational only. This guide reports 29 CFR 552.5 and 552.104 as published and labels our own reasoning as ours. It is not legal or tax advice — a specific arrangement can turn on facts this guide doesn’t cover. Last reviewed: August 2026.

More on how KindHow separates a source from a house call: the published methodology. Every guide is listed on the guides index.