In 2013, the Obama administration included live-in caregivers in U.S. wage and overtime law. Previously, those caregivers – along with salaried workers – had been exempt from overtime provisions.
The administration’s goal at the time was to raise caregiver wages. That has certainly happened, albeit in a small number of cases. Mostly, though, the Obama-era regulation has ended up decreasing the amount of live-in care that home care agencies provide.
“Live-in care used to be a less expensive way of getting 24-hour care,” Georgetown Home Care (GHC) CEO John Bradshaw told Home Health Care News. “Now, it’s a really expensive way of getting a limited number of caregivers. Families need people there around the clock, but don’t want to have six caregivers coming in every week, doing 12-hour shifts. It’s now, really, just for the wealthy.”
Based in Washington, D.C, GHC provides personal care, respite care, senior companionship services and senior transportation services to the D.C. metro area as well as Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and Northern Virginia.
Before the provision that removed caregivers from the overtime exemption list, live-in care was about 25% of GHC’s business. Now, it represents just about 5%. The small number of live-in caregivers that the agency does currently employ generally make more than $100,000 per year.
“And God bless them – they work really, really hard,”...
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