Home Care Workers Won the Right to Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay—the Trump Administration Wants to Take it Away

The Trump Administration is trying to gut employment rights for home care workers through the federal rulemaking process.

After many decades of organizing, home care workers finally won basic employment protections in 2015, including the right to federal minimum wage and overtime. They had been shut out from these basic employment rights for more than 75 years.

In 1938, when Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing federal minimum wage and overtime rights, home care workers were intentionally excluded from these protections. And in 1974, when minimum wage and overtime laws were extended to other domestic workers, many home care employers used regulatory loopholes meant for “companions” and “casual babysitters” to continue to deny home care workers these rights.

Many home care employers used regulatory loopholes meant for ‘companions’ and ‘casual babysitters’ to deny home care workers the most basic employment rights.

As a result, a much-needed workforce of majority women, people of color, and immigrants continued to be underpaid for their essential work of bathing, changing dressings, and conducting other tasks that enable individuals to live at home. Meanwhile, the for-profit agencies employing home care workers pocketed most of the payments, including Medicaid reimbursements that cover in-home care, instead of paying decent wages.

The Trump Administration plans to return to that time by getting rid of the protections workers won in 2015 by labeling home care workers exempt “companions” instead of employees. The results will be disastrous.

An Essential Workforce Now Under Attack

Most people with disabilities and older adults prefer to live at home, increasing the demand for in-home care and services. The industry has boomed since the mid-1970s, becoming one of the fastest-growing sectors, with a workforce that includes nearly three million home care workers. In response to these dramatic shifts, in 2011, President Obama instructed the Labor Department to rewrite the regulations to clarify that home care workers would be guaranteed the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. The new rule was finalized in 2015. A decade later, Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL) has proposed rulemaking to take away even those minimal protections.

This is terrible policy for three reasons. First, home care worker wages are abysmally low, meaning they cannot feed their families and make ends meet. As of 2023, “almost one-quarter of home care aides live below the federal poverty line, and over half participate in programs such as SNAP.” Wages for direct care workers are lower than entry-level roles in other industries that require similar training or qualifications. Nationally, the median wage for home care workers is $16.13 per hour (lower in states without a union), and these workers have a national median annual income of just $21,889.

Low wages have created high turnover and shortages of these essential workers, at a time when our population is aging and the need for in-home care and services is rising.

These low wages have created high turnover and shortages of these essential workers, at a time when our population is aging and the need for in-home care and services is rising. The low wages and high turnover weaken the quality of care provided, as highly skilled workers seek economic security and leave the field. Trump’s DOL deregulation will only fuel these harmful trends.

Second, in states where workers have organized unions, their wages are higher, their jobs carry benefits, and their states engage in bargaining to ensure quality care and services. Home care workers and individuals receiving care organize for better working conditions and quality of care, with the unions SEIU and AFSCME and worker groups such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Miami Worker Center, and the Pilippino Workers Center. Many of these worker groups have pushed for state coverage independent of the federal rule. But there are many other states where workers don’t have these protections, meaning that the industry will experience a sudden and vast gap between different states without a federal rule. This will make it much harder to continue advancing working conditions in the face of steep Medicaid cuts, particularly in states without protections.

Finally, large corporations, like Humana and PPL, have become large national intermediaries in the sector, paying their workers low wages and skimming large profits off public dollars. The home care industry was valued at $100.95 billion in 2024, and it is projected to grow from $107.07 billion in 2025 to $176.30 billion by 2032.

In addition, some for-profit companies in states like Florida create “registries” where workers must register as “independent contractors” and post up job availability for in-home consumers, pushing take-home pay even lower. These trends put pressure on isolated workers to complain of sub-par pay, and the enforcement of basic minimum wage and overtime laws remains a challenge. Companies using these tactics will be emboldened by deregulation of the industry and will continue to depress wages.

Help Home Care Workers Keep These Basic Protections

Home care workers need full rights and protections under labor and employment laws. Excluding them from these bedrock rights rewards for-profit intermediaries, embeds a second-class status of home care workers, and creates severe care and service problems for older adults and people with disabilities.

You can help stop the Trump Administration from gutting rights for home care workers, and instead, help create a good-jobs economy, where all workers have access to expansive rights, by following this link and submitting a comment on the Trump DOL’s rule by Tuesday, September 2. Demand that the Trump Administration stop their attempt to roll back employment rights for home care workers.