Who are the 12 million paid care workers in the EU

This briefing presents a new estimate for the number of paid care workers in the EU. The estimate is primarily based on EIGE’s narrow definition of care work and was extended to also reflect undeclared care workers. Accordingly, some categories of paid care workers in both domestic and institutional settings, such as childcare workers, teachers’ aides, and personal care workers in the health sector are included in the estimate. The estimation approach drew on data from several studies and applied reasonable assumptions when data were lacking. Overall, the analysis finds that there are currently about 12 million paid care workers in the EU the vast majority of whom are women (see Figure 2). Some of the key sources of data used to construct this estimate are described below.