Do nannies make more than daycare teachers?
No verified national number says so — in either direction.
BLS publishes no nanny salary: the survey behind the daycare-side pay figures does not count private households.
Published daycare-side data: childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) earned a median of $16.82 an hour in May 2025.
So the honest daycare teacher vs nanny salary comparison is about what each job's pay is built on — hourly rates, benefits, stability and career growth.
Hourly pay compared: only one side has federal data
On the daycare side, the number is published.
Childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) — the BLS occupation that includes daycare teachers, assistants and aides — earned a median of $16.82 an hour ($34,980 a year) in May 2025.
The 10th percentile was $11.66 an hour and the 90th percentile $22.12.
Narrowed to child day care services, the industry row that contains center-based work, the median is $16.43 an hour ($34,170 a year).
State-by-state medians are on our daycare teacher salary page.
The nanny side has no BLS number.
Childcare workers held about 1.0 million jobs in 2025; 17% of them worked in private households — nannying — and another 24% were self-employed.
The OEWS wage survey that produces the medians above counts 518,910 jobs and excludes both groups, so its figures do not describe nannies, and BLS publishes no wage figure for home daycare owners or nannies.
BLS's published pricing description for the workers the wage survey leaves out covers the self-employed: BLS says their pay depends on the hours they work and the number and ages of children in their care.
For nanny jobs, BLS publishes no wage figure, and the research for this page verified no other national nanny-pay source — so the rate to judge is the one in each family's offer.
That is why this page prints no national nanny salary.
About those "average nanny salary" figures
Benefits and stability: an employer vs a household
Benefits are where the employer-vs-household difference shows first — and the documented center-side examples come from two national chains' public filings.
KinderCare reports offering eligible full-time employees health and wellness benefits, matching 401(k) contributions and life insurance, plus discounted tuition for employees' children.
Bright Horizons' 2025 filing lists healthcare, a 401(k) with matching contributions, paid time off, child care tuition subsidies, paid parental bonding leave — and a program that pays for a CDA, an associate or a bachelor's ECE degree at no cost.
Those are two employers' filings, not a survey of centers, so weigh each center's actual offer.
There is also a federal threshold worth knowing: the ACA employer-coverage penalty applies only to employers that averaged at least 50 full-time employees, including full-time equivalents, in the prior calendar year — so most single-site centers are not subject to it.
At a small center, health coverage is an offer to evaluate, not a given.
For household jobs, the research for this page found no verified data on benefits in private-household care work — the same gap that leaves nanny pay unmeasured.
So read any nanny offer's written agreement for paid time off, sick leave and health help rather than assuming any of it.
One pay rule is documented.
Federal overtime rules (29 CFR part 541) exempt "teachers of kindergarten or nursery school pupils" only when their primary duty is teaching in an "educational establishment," and read together, the federal rules mean a typical licensed child care center is not automatically one — so center teachers are generally non-exempt: hourly, and overtime-eligible, unless state law treats the program as elementary education.
How those rules treat household employment was not covered by this page's research; check with the U.S. Department of Labor before relying on either side.
On stability, BLS's employment projection covers the childcare-worker occupation as a whole — center, private-household and self-employed work alike: employment is projected to decline 2% from 2025 to 2035, with about 150,300 openings a year from replacement needs.
It does not separate center jobs from nanny jobs, and the research for this page found no figure that does, so it can't say which side is steadier.
Confirm how pay rules apply to a specific job
Career growth: the center side documents its ladder
Three May 2025 national medians from the same survey read like rungs: $16.82 an hour for childcare workers, $18.34 for preschool teachers — the BLS occupation for lead and pre-K teaching — and $28.51 for preschool and childcare center directors, $59,300 a year.
Same survey, same date, so the rungs are comparable in a way no daycare-versus-nanny pair can be.
Each rung carries its own credential expectations.
The CDA is the credential BLS says states most often require of childcare workers who need a national credential, and it must be renewed every 3 years.
BLS says preschool teachers typically need at least an associate degree, and public-school preschool teachers generally need a bachelor's degree and an early childhood license.
The data behind the rungs: the same preschool-teacher occupation earned a median of $27.29 an hour ($56,750 a year) in elementary and secondary schools versus $17.72 ($36,850) in child day care services, and BLS projects preschool teacher employment to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035, with about 66,700 openings a year.
The nanny side has no ladder in the federal data: the federal wage survey excludes private households, and the research for this page found no nanny-pay source to build one from.
For the parts of that trade-off that aren't about pay — setting, duties, requirements — the nanny vs daycare teacher career comparison covers them in full.
Which fits you
Choose the center side if you want published numbers to check an offer against: a federal median to benchmark pay, an hourly wage that is generally overtime-eligible, benefits you can ask to see in writing, and rungs the federal data documents.
Choose nannying if you want one-on-one care work and are comfortable pricing your own labor — but judge it offer by offer: BLS publishes no wage figure for nannies, so the number that matters is the one in the family's agreement.
Whichever way you lean, compare the verifiables: the hourly rate and guaranteed hours, whether overtime is paid, which benefits are in the offer, and who pays for required training.
Ask each center for the posted rate and its benefits summary; ask a nanny family what the written agreement spells out.
If the center side is where you land, childcare teacher jobs show which centers near you are hiring — and you can read what each posting states about pay before you apply.
This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. For how pay and overtime rules apply to a specific job, check with the U.S. Department of Labor or your state labor agency; for staff requirements, your state's child care licensing agency.