More work is done for free than for pay in the canton of Zurich
1.6 billion hours of unpaid work against 1.4 billion hours of paid work: that is one year in Switzerland's strongest economy, counted by the canton itself. People who can afford household help win back almost three hours a week, and it is the woman who wins them. Yet twice as many people with a university degree buy that help as people without one. An analysis of the official figures, with the bill for what those three hours cost when they are properly registered.
Summary
The canton of Zurich has the largest economy in Switzerland. And still: its residents performed more than 1.6 billion hours of unpaid work in 2020 and around 1.4 billion hours of paid work. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, looking after children, volunteering: together a volume that exceeds all the canton's paid work by 14 percent. Per head that is about 24 hours a week. The figures are not ours. They come from the Statistical Office of the canton of Zurich, which analysed the unpaid-work module of the Swiss Labour Force Survey.
That work is unevenly shared. Women do a good 60 percent of the unpaid volume and almost ten hours a week more than men, which is more than a full working day. In housework alone it is 22 hours against 15. Men have visibly caught up: the share reporting no housework at all on the reference day fell from 19 to 8 percent, and their participation in meal preparation rose from 49 to 66 percent. Yet the female lead shrank only from 66 to 47 percent, and that narrowing is not even statistically established.
The most interesting finding in the cantonal analysis is a different one, and it is rarely quoted: external household help works, but it is a privilege. People with a tertiary degree use regular outside help twice as often (19 percent) as people without one (10 percent). And where that help exists, women in couples spend almost three hours a week less on housework, statistically confirmed and controlled for education, age, working hours and number of children. For comparable men, nothing changes. We calculated what those three hours cost when properly registered: CHF 461 a month, everything included.
The volume: the canton's biggest industry appears in no statistic
There is one activity in the canton of Zurich that consumes more hours than any other, and it appears in no industry statistic. 1.6 billion hours of unpaid work stand against 1.4 billion hours of paid work. For comparison: the canton's own business statistics, built on the federal business census, cover exactly 19 industries, from agriculture to other services. Work in one's own home is in none of them, and the private household as an employer, section T in the international industry classification, is missing from that dataset entirely.
Annual volume in billions of hours, resident population aged 15+. Unpaid work covers housework, care of children in one's own household and volunteering. Source: Statistical Office canton of Zurich, statistik.info 2022/02 (SAKE 2020).
What would that volume be worth if someone had to pay for it? Valued at the statutory minimum wage for domestic work of CHF 20.35 an hour, the lowest legally permissible rate, those 1.6 billion hours come to CHF 32.6 billion a year. At the usual Zurich market rate of CHF 29 it would be CHF 46.4 billion. Spread over the canton's roughly 701,000 private households, even the minimum-wage figure means about CHF 46,400 of unpaid work per household per year, or almost 44 hours a week per household. It is the largest invisible item in Zurich's economic accounts.
Who does it: ten hours of difference a week
The split is not a detail, it is half the story. Women do a good 60 percent of the total unpaid volume, men conversely about 60 percent of the paid one. In weekly hours women reach 22 hours of housework, 5 hours caring for their own children and 1.8 hours of volunteering; men reach 15, 3 and 1.4. The gap of almost ten hours a week is more than a full working day.
Average weekly hours for the resident population aged 15+, including people who spent no time on it on the reference day. In total women do almost 10 hours a week more unpaid work than men.
Something did move over the decade, and it moved on the men's side. Their housework time rose by 2.6 hours a week, women's by 1.5. The share of men who had done no housework at all on the reference day fell from 19 to 8 percent; in meal preparation, participation rose from just under half (49 percent) to two thirds (66 percent). Even so, in 2020 women still spend twice as much time on laundry, over 40 percent more on cleaning and tidying and a good third more on cooking. These are precisely the tasks that can least be postponed.
Weekly hours of housework, resident population aged 15+. The 2010 values are back-calculated from the published changes (men +2.6, women +1.5 hours). Cross-check: that yields a female lead of 66% in 2010 and 47% in 2020, exactly the published figures. The narrowing is not statistically significant.
And they are the tasks where the extremes lie far apart: 47 percent of women but only 28 percent of men spend more than 20 hours a week on housework. Among parents the picture sharpens further: mothers whose youngest child is under seven spend almost 12 hours a week on washing, feeding and putting children to bed, fathers a little over 6.
The privilege: who can buy housework, and what it changes
Households with the means can hand housework to third parties for money. That is exactly what the cantonal analysis measures, and the gap is clear: 19 percent of people with a tertiary degree regularly use help from third parties for cleaning, shopping or other housework, against 10 percent without a tertiary degree. Identical in both survey waves, 2016 and 2020.
Share of people regularly using help from third parties for cleaning, shopping or other housework. Identical values in the 2016 and 2020 waves. The survey does not distinguish paid household help from informal help by relatives.
The second part of the finding matters more: that help works, and it works one-sidedly. Women in couples of working age with external household help spend almost three hours a week less on housework than comparable women without. The estimate comes from a regression model controlling for education, age, the working hours of both partners, the number of children and home office. For comparable men no significant reduction is observed. Buying housework, in practice, buys a woman's time back.
And who performs the work that was bought? Women again. In the occupational group «cleaners and helpers in private households», 96 percent in the canton of Zurich are women. The cantonal analysis notes soberly that this is an occupation with low average wages. Unpaid work does not disappear, then. It changes person, and often social class too.
Without household help
- •Women in couples: 22 hours of housework a week
- •47% of women exceed 20 hours a week
- •Housework time is the reserve mothers draw on when their paid hours rise
- •The female lead in housework still stands at 47%
With household help
- •Almost 3 hours a week less housework, controlled for education, age, hours and children
- •No measurable effect for comparable men
- •Available to 19% of people with a tertiary degree, to 10% without
- •96% of cleaners in Zurich private households are women
The bill: what three hours a week cost, properly registered
If three hours of household help a week measurably save three hours of housework, the practical question follows: what does that cost if you do it properly? With the Clino payroll calculator, under Zurich conditions and at the usual rate of CHF 29 an hour, three hours a week produce a gross wage of CHF 408 a month and a total employer outlay of CHF 461, including old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, accident cover, family allowances and administration. The employee receives CHF 362 net and builds up her own pension entitlement.
The premium for legality here is about CHF 53 a month. At the statutory domestic-work minimum wage of CHF 20.35 an hour the same three hours cost CHF 329 a month. Up to an annual wage of CHF 22,680 the job runs under the simplified payroll procedure, which was created for exactly these cases: one registration with the social insurance fund, one rate, one annual statement.
| Hours | Gross wage | Employer cost | Net to the employee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 h/week | CHF 272 | CHF 314 | CHF 241 |
| 3 h/week | CHF 408 | CHF 461 | CHF 362 |
| 4 h/week | CHF 544 | CHF 608 | CHF 482 |
| 5 h/week | CHF 681 | CHF 755 | CHF 603 |
Hourly rate CHF 29, the usual Zurich rate for household help; 4 weeks holiday, permit C, age 45, simplified payroll procedure. Employer cost = gross wage including holiday supplement plus AHV/IV/EO, ALV, accident insurance and family allowances plus the CHF 19.90 Clino fee. At the legal minimum wage of CHF 20.35 the same 3 hours cost CHF 329 a month. Computed with the Clino payroll calculator, July 2026.
Why a payroll platform publishes this data
Clino registers household employment in all 26 cantons: written contract, old-age insurance from the first franc with the cantonal fund, accident insurance, occupational pension where due, monthly payslips and an annual wage statement, for CHF 19.90 a month. These figures interest us because they show the size of the subject: the work in question is the largest unpaid item in Zurich's economy, and the part of it that is paid runs to a considerable extent without a contract and without social insurance. Registering it turns a grey zone into employment with a pension, insurance and rights.
In Switzerland's strongest economy, more work is done for free than for pay. Those who can buy back three hours a week do so. Those who cannot do it themselves. And in both cases it is usually a woman.
Surprising findings
The private household as an employer does not exist in Zurich's business statistics
The canton's business dataset, built on the federal business census, lists 19 industries. The international classification additionally knows section T, «activities of households as employers». It does not appear in the cantonal data. So the canton knows how many people agriculture and forestry employ in every single municipality, but not how many people work in Zurich's private households.
Men caught up markedly without the gap closing statistically
The participation numbers are striking: the share of men doing no housework on the reference day fell from 19 to 8 percent, and participation in cooking rose from 49 to 66 percent. Yet the female lead in time shrank only from 66 to 47 percent, and the Statistical Office states explicitly that this decline of about one hour a week is not statistically significant. More men take part, but the main load stays where it was.
Household help relieves women, and men not measurably at all
The effect of external household help is asymmetric: almost three hours less housework a week for women in couples, no significant change for comparable men. Hiring household help does not replace «the couple's housework» but part of the woman's. At the same time, 96 percent of that work is again done by women, in an occupational group with low average wages.
Sources
- Statistical Office canton of Zurich — statistik.info 2022/02, «Unbezahlte Arbeit im Kanton Zürich» (2022) — Unpaid-work module of the Swiss Labour Force Survey 2010–2020; volume, hours by gender, use of external household help
- Federal Statistical Office — Swiss Labour Force Survey (SLFS), unpaid work module (2010–2020) — Primary survey, analysed at cantonal level
- Federal Statistical Office — structural survey, occupational group «cleaners and helpers in private households» (2016–2020) — Pooled five-year sample, canton of Zurich: 96% women
- Statistical Office canton of Zurich — municipal portraits, indicator 54 «private households total» (2020) — 701,253 private households, the reference for per-household figures
- Statistical Office canton of Zurich — «Betriebslandschaft im Kanton Zürich» (business census) (2025) — Industry dimension: NOGA sections A to S, no section T (households as employers)
- Federal standard employment contract for domestic work (2026) — Minimum wage CHF 20.35/hour for unskilled employees from 1 January 2026
- Clino — payroll calculator (2026) — Employer cost of a registered household employee in the canton of Zurich
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About Clino
Clino is a Swiss SaaS platform enabling households to legally employ domestic workers — payroll, contracts, social security, and accident insurance included. CHF 19.90/month. All 26 cantons. Founded 2025 in Zurich. clino.ch
