Hiring an assistant for your home daycare: requirements, pay and payroll

The licensing question comes before the hiring question, and your state answers it through license categories.

Your state may define a category above the family child care home that is built around a second adult: as of December 31, 2020, 38 states including DC licensed "group child care homes" — defined in that federal-funded scan as two or more adults caring for children in the provider's residence — while 13 states did not license that category at all.

The trigger for that category is usually capacity.

In the same 2020 scan, most states licensed a home as a group child care home at 7 or more children, and 23 of the 38 states that license group homes allowed no more than 12 children in the home.

If your growth plan crosses your state's threshold, the second adult may be part of what the larger category expects — and the reverse matters too: staying under a threshold is what keeps the single-provider category available to you.

The national picture is old, so treat it as context rather than the current map.

A 2012 federal licensing-trends webinar reported that 10 states licensed family child care homes at one or more unrelated children, the most common licensing threshold then was 3 or 4 children, 7 states set it at 6 or more, and 3 states — Idaho, Louisiana and New Jersey — did not require home licensure.

The sources we read do not confirm those figures, and thresholds have changed in many states since.

Confirm the category question before you post the job: whether adding a second adult changes your category, your capacity or your obligations is set by your state child care licensing agency, and states revise their rules.

If you are still shaping the business itself, the full setup sequence lives in our step-by-step home daycare startup guide.

Our research found no national qualification for a home daycare assistant — the requirements are your state's, and they apply to you through your license.

Start the hiring process by asking your state child care licensing agency for its current requirements for assistants in homes, in writing, and screen against that list rather than against a generic job-ad template.

For scale on what states have asked for: the 2020 federal scan of group child care homes found annual ongoing training for assistant providers ranged from 5 to 24 hours, with a median of 12 — and for the providers themselves, 6 to 30 hours with a median of 15.

Those are 2020 figures for group child care homes, so confirm the hours your state sets today before you build a training schedule or a start date around them.

Screen for three things, in order: whatever your state's current list names for the role, the practical experience to carry the duties below, and the temperament for working as the second adult in someone's home program.

A candidate who meets the state's list but has never worked in a small mixed-age group is a different hire than the reverse — your interview should test for both halves.

When you are ready to verify credentials, ask for originals of any training certificates and check them against your state's records before the first paid hour.

If your home is licensed, regulated or registered, or you are paid with CCDF subsidy, the background check is the one step that runs on the federal government's clock as well as yours.

Under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) background-check rules at 45 CFR 98.43, administered by the Office of Child Care at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a "child care staff member" includes anyone employed by a provider for compensation — including contract employees and self-employed individuals.

Hiring your assistant as a contractor instead of an employee does not lift the check requirement.

In a family child care home, the staff roster starts at home: under the CCDF rules, every household member age 18 or older counts as a staff member needing checks.

By the time you hire, those checks should already be part of your licensing file — the assistant's checks are the new work your hire creates.

On timing, the federal rule is specific: under 45 CFR 98.43(d)(4), a new hire may begin work after a qualifying result on either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint check — but until every component of the check clears, they must be supervised at all times by someone with a qualifying background check.

That means planning your assistant's first weeks around supervised shifts, not solo coverage.

Your state may be stricter than that federal floor.

Caring for Our Children Basics, an ACF guidance document dated July 2025, adds the benchmarks: staff should be screened on employment and at least every 5 years, and checks should be completed within 45 days.

The full component-by-component walkthrough of the federal process is on our childcare background-check process page.

Confirm before the first shift: what your state requires, in what order, and what your assistant may do before full clearance are your state child care licensing agency's to answer — the state's answer may be stricter than the federal floor.

The first hire makes you an employer, and the employer layer has three parts: wage rules, payroll taxes and insurance.

On wage rules, do not assume a "teacher" label settles overtime.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which the U.S. Department of Labor administers, assistants and caregivers whose primary duty is not teaching are non-exempt employees, and whether an educational-establishment exemption applies depends on state law.

An assistant in a home daycare is exactly the kind of role that assumption gets wrong — confirm how your state treats it before you set the schedule and the hours.

On the rest of the employer layer, honesty about what this page can tell you: our research did not verify state workers' compensation thresholds for small or home-based employers, final-paycheck deadlines or similar employment rules, because they are state-specific.

Confirm what applies to an employer of one in your state with your state labor agency before your assistant's first day, and take payroll registration and withholding to a tax professional who works with family child care providers — the deadlines are not something to learn by missing one.

Two habits to keep from the first day: put the hourly rate, the schedule and the pay date in writing before the first shift, and keep the time records — they are the raw material for every wage question, tax filing and insurance claim that follows.

The honest job description is: whatever the second adult in your program needs to do that day.

Build the role from these duties:

• Active supervision as the second set of eyes — watching the group during free play, outdoor time and transitions so one child's need never takes your eyes off the rest.
• Routine care — diapering and toileting, handwashing, helping with coats and shoes, and nap routines.
• Meals — setting up, serving and cleaning up, following your program's menu and any food-program recordkeeping you keep.
• Activities — preparing materials, running a craft or circle-time segment, and resetting the space between parts of the day.
• Families at the door — greeting at drop-off and pickup, and passing along how the day went.
• Light documentation — attendance, incident notes and the daily details families ask about, in whatever format your program uses.

Within your state's rules, the split between your work and the assistant's is yours to define — write it into the job description before you interview, so candidates know whether they are applying to lead activities, to anchor routines, or to cover both.

The two-adult structure is exactly what the group child care home category formalizes, which is why the licensing answer in the first section shapes the job description itself.

The short answer: whatever your state's current list says — with the federal requirements below on top where they apply.

We found no single national standard for a home daycare assistant — requirements are set state by state by each state's child care licensing agency, and they differ.

Do not work from the absence of a familiar requirement; ask the agency for the assistant's requirements for homes and hire against that.

For a sense of how much states vary, BLS's description of the broader childcare-worker occupation notes that education requirements vary across states, from a required high school diploma or equivalent for entry-level positions to no education requirement at all — and when states do require a nationally recognized credential, it is most often the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential from the Council for Professional Recognition, which must be renewed every 3 years.

That is the occupation-wide picture, not your state's rule for assistants in homes.

Two federal requirements can sit on top of your state's list.

First, the background checks in the section above, which reach homes that are licensed, regulated or registered, or paid with CCDF subsidy.

Second, the CCDF floor: license-exempt providers who are paid with CCDF subsidy must still meet federal health, safety and background-check requirements — the relatives specified in 45 CFR 98.42(c) are the main exception to the health and safety rules.

If subsidy families are part of your enrollment, the federal requirements reach your home even where your state would not otherwise license it.

Confirm before you hire: qualification and training requirements for assistants are set and revised by your state child care licensing agency — get the current list the week you start interviewing.

Licensing decides when you may add a second adult; the business decides when you should.

The licensing half is the category and capacity math from the first section — your state's thresholds define what your license allows at each headcount.

The business half shows up as any of these:

• Enrollment sitting at or near your licensed capacity for longer than a registration cycle, with families on a waitlist.
• Hours that outlast one person — early drop-offs stacked against late pickups, with no break in between.
• Coverage you cannot self-supply — appointments, sick days and training hours that currently mean turning families away.
• An age mix that needs two sets of hands — an infant nap schedule colliding with a toddler's outdoor energy is a two-adult afternoon.
• A growth plan that crosses a category line — if the next capacity tier expects a second adult, hiring ahead of the change beats scrambling after it.

The states-without-mandatory-licensing wrinkle: as of 2020, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Dakota had no mandatory licensing for any home-based providers — licensing there was voluntary, with its requirements applying when providers were paid with public funds.

Even where a license is optional, the hiring triggers above still run through capacity, subsidy conditions and insurance, so the "when" question still starts with a phone call to your state child care licensing agency.

Set the offer from data, and from the right series.

Our sources carry no wage series for a home daycare assistant — the nearest published category is childcare workers (SOC 39-9011), a broad occupation that spans centers, homes and private households: in 2025, 29% of childcare workers worked in child daycare services, 24% were self-employed and 17% worked in private households, per BLS.

Treat its figures as a benchmark for setting your floor, not a quote for your exact posting.

The benchmark, from BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025: childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) earned a U.S. median of $16.82 per hour ($34,980 per year), with the 10th percentile at $11.66 per hour and the 90th at $22.12.

Within the child daycare services industry, the median hourly wage was $16.43 — compared with $18.15 in local elementary and secondary schools and $16.23 in religious, grantmaking, civic and similar organizations.

State-by-state figures for the same SOC are on our childcare worker salary page.

Schedule shapes the annual cost as much as the hourly rate: BLS notes part-time work and irregular hours are common for childcare workers, so a part-time assistant at a competitive hourly rate may cost less per year than a full-time one at a lower rate — and may be easier to schedule around your program's peaks.

Budget the wage against your enrollment revenue rather than a guess: states set CCDF subsidy rates using a statistically valid market rate survey or an approved alternative methodology conducted no earlier than two years before the CCDF Plan, so a current rate study exists for your state — ask your state child care agency for it before you price what you can afford to pay.

The posting does the recruiting, so put the specifics up front: the duties split from the section above, the schedule with its earliest and latest hours, the hourly range, the qualifications you will verify, and a straight sentence about the background check — stating it plainly saves both sides time.

Meet candidates where the career already lives.

The job-seeker side of this work — training routes, the CDA, what the career pays — is covered in our family child care provider overview, and the assistant openings on this board sit under assistant teacher jobs; browsing a few live postings there can show you how other employers frame the role before you set your own range.

When you are ready, post your assistant job on ChildcareHires, where the audience is early educators actively searching for their next role.

Run the close like a sequence, not a scramble: applications, then qualification verification against your state's list, then the background check started early enough that the supervised-start window works for both of you, then a written working agreement covering duties, schedule, rate and pay date.

Every step is covered in the sections above — the posting just sets its clock.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. License categories, assistant qualifications, background-check procedures and training requirements are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency; wage-and-hour questions belong to the U.S. Department of Labor or your state labor agency, and payroll setup to a tax professional. Confirm the current rules there before you post the job or set a start date.