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✆ 1-844-626-6922Nanny Holiday Pay, Time Off and Bonuses: What Families Owe in 2026
What the law actually requires over the holidays, what families in Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida and Texas actually do, and where the two part company.
Every November, the same question lands in our inbox from families who have never employed anyone before: what do we actually owe our nanny over the holidays? It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that the legal floor is much lower than most people assume — and the customary standard is much higher. The gap between those two is where families get into trouble, because a nanny who expected what every other nanny on her playground gets will quietly start looking in January.
Here is what the law requires, what families in our markets actually do, and where the two part company.
The short version
| Required by law? | What families typically do | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid holidays off | No | 8–10 paid days a year |
| Extra pay for working a holiday | No | Time-and-a-half, or a swapped day |
| Overtime past 40 hours (live-out) | Yes — 1.5x | Same, and it is not waivable |
| Overtime past 40 hours (live-in) | No (federal exemption) | Many families pay it anyway |
| Year-end bonus | No | One to two weeks’ pay |
| Paid time off between Christmas and New Year | No | Paid, when the family travels without her |
What the law actually requires
Nothing, where paid holidays are concerned
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked. The Department of Labor is explicit that holidays and vacations are a matter of agreement between employer and employee, not a federal entitlement. There is no federal rule giving your nanny Thanksgiving off, paid or unpaid.
Nor is there extra pay for working one. The DOL’s own guidance on overtime states that the Act does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays or regular days of rest as such. If your nanny works Christmas Day, the law does not make that hour worth more than a Tuesday hour. It only becomes overtime if it pushes her past 40 hours in that workweek.
None of the five states we work in — Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and Texas — adds a holiday-pay requirement on top of that.
Overtime, which is required, and which families get wrong
A live-out nanny is a covered employee under federal law. Hours past 40 in a workweek are owed at one and a half times her regular rate. This is the single most common compliance mistake we see, and it usually happens in exactly two places: the week of Thanksgiving, when a family hosting twelve people asks for three long days, and the week between Christmas and New Year.
Three things families get wrong about it:
- You cannot agree it away. A nanny who says she is happy with a flat weekly rate for 50 hours is still owed overtime on hours 41 through 50. An agreement to the contrary does not hold up.
- It is per employer, not per job. The 40 hours are counted against your household. If she also works Saturdays for a different family, those hours do not combine.
- A salary does not exempt her. Household employees are not exempt because they are paid a fixed amount. Paying a salary and tracking hours are not in conflict — you need both.
Live-in nannies are the exception. Federal law exempts an employee who resides in the employer’s household from the overtime requirement — but not from the minimum wage requirement, and not from the obligation to keep records of hours worked. None of our five states overrides that exemption. North Carolina is worth a specific note: it has its own 40-hour overtime law, but it expressly exempts domestic employees, so federal rules govern there too.
Worth being plain about: that exemption is a floor, not a recommendation. A live-in who works 55 hours in a holiday week and gets nothing extra for the last 15 notices. If you want to know how live-in and live-out compare on cost and expectations before you decide, our guide to live-in versus live-out nannies breaks it down.
Minimum wage, which has just changed in Florida
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and applies to household employees. Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas all effectively sit at that federal figure for a nanny.
Florida does not. As of September 30, 2026, Florida’s minimum wage is $15.00 an hour — the final step of the 2020 constitutional amendment. It holds at $15.00 until September 30, 2027, when it becomes inflation-indexed. If you are in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Naples or Jacksonville, that is the floor now, and it is worth checking that your payroll reflects the change. In practice no career nanny in South Florida works anywhere near minimum wage, so this rarely binds — but it is the legal floor and it moved nine days ago.
What families in our markets actually do
Eight to ten paid holidays
The work agreements we see land at eight to ten paid days a year. The usual core is New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, with the extra days coming from the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and a floating day the nanny picks. A couple of our families add the nanny’s birthday, which costs almost nothing and is remembered for years.
For 2026 and the turn of the year, the dates in play are Thanksgiving, Thursday November 26, with the Friday after often added; Christmas Day, Friday December 25, with Christmas Eve often added; and New Year’s Day, Friday January 1, 2027. All three fall in a way that makes a long weekend natural, which is convenient for a family and expected by a nanny.
Time-and-a-half if she works the day itself
Not required, close to universal. If you need your nanny on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day so you can host, the going practice is time-and-a-half for those hours or a swapped day off at full pay. Decide which before November, not the morning of.
Paid when you travel without her
This is the one families most often get wrong, and it is worth stating plainly: if you go to the in-laws for ten days and tell your nanny not to come, she still gets paid. Guaranteed hours are the backbone of a career nanny’s income. She did not choose to take the time off and cannot make it up elsewhere on a week’s notice. A family that docks two weeks of pay in December because they were away will be hiring again in February, and the replacement will cost more than the two weeks did.
If you want her to come along instead, that is a different arrangement with its own rules about paid hours and overnight time — we have a separate guide to taking a nanny on a family trip.
A year-end bonus of one to two weeks’ pay
One to two weeks’ salary is the customary range among the families we place with, scaled by how long she has been with you and whether she is full-time. A nanny in her fourth year with the same family sits at the top of that range; someone who started in September sits at the bottom, or gets a prorated gesture.
Two practical notes. A cash bonus is wages — it runs through payroll and is subject to the same taxes as any other pay, so budget the employer side of it too. And a bonus is not a substitute for a raise: if she has not had a rate increase in two years, a December bonus will be received as a very nice gift from an employer who is underpaying her. Our city salary guides — Atlanta, Charlotte, Charleston, Miami, Dallas, Houston and Austin — have current hourly ranges if you want to check where your rate sits before you decide.
Put it in writing, and know what that commits you to
Everything above is a matter of agreement, which is exactly why it belongs in the written work agreement rather than in a text message in week three. Name the specific holidays, say which are paid, say what happens if she works one, and say what happens when the family travels.
One thing worth knowing if you are in North Carolina: once you have promised a wage benefit, the state treats it as an enforceable obligation. North Carolina’s labor department is clear that an employer does not have to offer paid holidays or vacation at all — but having promised them, it must pay them under whatever policy or practice it established, any reduction has to be announced going forward rather than applied retroactively, and earned vacation cannot simply be withdrawn without a written forfeiture clause. The lesson is not to promise less. It is to write down what you mean and then do it.
The tax side, briefly
For tax year 2026, if you pay a household employee $3,000 or more in cash wages in the calendar year, Social Security and Medicare obligations apply. That threshold is per employee, per year, and it went up from $2,800 for 2025 — so a figure you looked up last December is now wrong. Separately, paying $1,000 or more in any single calendar quarter to household employees in total triggers federal unemployment tax.
The rates for 2026 are 6.2% each for employer and employee on Social Security, on wages up to $184,500, and 1.45% each for Medicare — about 15.3% combined across both sides. A December bonus counts toward all of it.
We do not run payroll ourselves and we are not tax advisors. We refer our families to GTM Payroll Services, who do this for household employers specifically, and the question of how to structure a bonus is a ten-minute phone call with them rather than a guess.
Nanny holiday pay: common questions
No. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, and the Department of Labor treats holidays and vacation as a matter of agreement between employer and employee. None of the states we work in — Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida or Texas — adds a holiday-pay requirement. In practice, the families we place with offer eight to ten paid days a year.
Not as a matter of law. The Department of Labor states that the Act does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays or regular days of rest as such. Those hours only become overtime if they push her past 40 in the workweek. Customary practice, though, is time-and-a-half for the holiday itself or a swapped day off at full pay — agree which one in advance.
If she is live-out, yes. Hours past 40 in a workweek are owed at one and a half times her regular rate, and that cannot be waived by agreement or avoided by paying a salary. If she lives in your home, federal law exempts her from the overtime requirement, though not from minimum wage or from your obligation to keep records of her hours. No state in our service area overrides that exemption.
Yes, if she has guaranteed hours — and virtually every career nanny does. She did not choose the time off and cannot replace the income on short notice. Docking a nanny two weeks of pay because the family was away is one of the fastest ways to lose her in January.
One to two weeks of salary is the customary range among the families we work with, scaled to how long she has been with you and whether she is full-time. A cash bonus is wages, so it runs through payroll and carries the usual employment taxes. A bonus does not substitute for an overdue raise.
For tax year 2026, paying a household employee $3,000 or more in cash wages during the calendar year triggers Social Security and Medicare obligations. That is per employee and up from $2,800 in 2025. Separately, $1,000 or more paid in any single calendar quarter across all household employees triggers federal unemployment tax. We are not tax advisors and refer our families to GTM Payroll Services for this.
This article is general information from a staffing agency, not legal, tax or payroll advice. Household employment rules change and your situation may differ — confirm specifics with your payroll provider or an employment attorney before you act. We refer our families to GTM Payroll Services for household payroll and tax questions.
New to employing someone in your home? Our guide to how to hire a nanny covers the process end to end, how our search works explains what we handle for you, and what a nanny background check covers walks through our screening.
Need a nanny before the holidays?
A good work agreement prevents most of the problems in this article, and we write one into every placement — pay, holidays, guaranteed hours and travel, agreed before anyone starts. We place fully screened career nannies with families across Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida and Texas, and back every placement with a six-month guarantee.
Prefer to talk it through? Call 1-844-626-6922.
