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What to Pay a Babysitter or Nanny in Berks County

Reading-area sitters post about $16 to $21 an hour and nannies about $19 to $20. What moves the rate, and the taxes once you pay one person $3,000 a year.

Berks Connect Blog|Published October 29, 2026
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Babysitters around Reading post rates of about $16 to $21 an hour, and nannies about $19 to $20 an hour; at the posted starting rate that's about $787 for a 40-hour week. Pay any one sitter or nanny $3,000 or more in cash wages in 2026 and Social Security and Medicare taxes come with the job, unless the sitter is under 18 and a student. A center is the other way to cover a work week, and daycares in Berks County lists them with hours and phone numbers; a sitter or nanny is a hire you make yourself.

How much to pay a babysitter in Berks County.

The $16 to $21 spread is where sitters around Reading set their own rates, the low end is one national sitter site's $16.97 starting rate and the high end is another's $20.96 average. The table puts the local and national numbers side by side.

Who you're hiring Figure What the figure is
Babysitter, Reading area $16 to $21 an hour Posted rates on two national sitter sites
Nanny, Reading area $19 to $20 an hour, about $787 for a 40-hour week Posted starting rates on one national sitter site
Nanny, nationally $870 a week for one child, 40 hours Rates parents posted in job listings, in a 2026 report
Babysitter, nationally $26.24 an hour for one child A second service's booking data

Reading-area rates as of October 2026 from Care.com and Sittercity; the national nanny figure from Care.com's 2026 Cost of Care Report; the national babysitter figure from UrbanSitter's booking data, updated in January 2026. The Reading figures are rates caregivers list; the national nanny figure is what parents posted.

These are posted rates, the number a sitter lists before you've told them anything about your kids or your Saturday.

What a nanny makes for a week of work.

Nannies in the Reading area post starting rates of about $19 to $20 an hour, which at 40 hours is about $787 a week. Pennsylvania's starting rate runs a bit higher at $21.07, and nationally parents posted $870 a week for a nanny with one child at 40 hours. The Reading figure is the one to offer from; the state and national ones show where it sits.

The comparison most parents are quietly making is against a center. A full-time center spot for a baby runs $275 to $320 a week on the rate sheets Berks centers post, laid out in what daycare costs in Berks County. So a nanny costs between two and three times a center spot for one child, and the difference buys care in your own home on your own hours.

What moves the rate up or down.

Start with the one-child rate and build. Each extra child adds $0.50 to $1 an hour, and an infant adds $1 to $2 an hour. Weekend nights, holidays and last-minute calls may ask a higher rate, and if a sitter drives your children in their own car, you reimburse the fuel.

Then there's the work beyond watching the kids. Tidying up after the kids is part of the evening; full meals or housework beyond that costs extra. For a nanny, $1 to $2 an hour more is standard when the job includes household tasks like meals or laundry. For a nanny who stays a year, a 2 to 3 percent cost-of-living raise with a 5 to 7 percent merit raise on top of it is standard.

When paying a sitter makes you a household employer.

A household employee is the IRS's name for a sitter or nanny whose work you direct. You have one when you control not only what work is done but how it's done. It doesn't matter whether the work is full time or part time, or whether you found the person through an agency or a list. The IRS's own example is a babysitter who follows your instructions four days a week in your home. If an agency provides the worker and controls what the work is and how it's done, the worker isn't your employee.

Having an employee and owing Social Security and Medicare taxes are two separate questions. Social Security and Medicare taxes apply once you pay any one household worker $3,000 or more in cash wages in 2026. They come to 15.3 percent of cash wages, half from you and half from the employee, 7.65 percent each. The IRS lets you pay the employee's half yourself instead of withholding it. Pay a worker less than $3,000 in 2026 and none of those wages count as Social Security or Medicare wages.

Wages you pay a sitter who is under 18 at any time during the year don't count toward those taxes, unless household work is the sitter's principal occupation. For a student it isn't, so a high school sitter's pay stays out. A sitter who is 18 or older counts like anyone else, unless the sitter is your spouse or your own child under 21.

Unemployment tax has its own threshold. The federal version applies when the cash wages you pay household employees add up to $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter of 2025 or 2026. It's 6 percent of the first $7,000 you pay each employee in the year, and a credit for what you pay into the state's unemployment fund, if that's paid by April 15, 2027, usually brings it down to 0.6 percent.

The federal paperwork is a Form W-2, the yearly wage statement you give an employee, due by February 1, 2027, and Schedule H, the household-employment tax form, filed with your 2026 federal return by April 15, 2027. You're not required to withhold federal income tax from a household employee's wages; you withhold it only if the employee asks and you agree. A question about your own return goes to accountants and tax preparers in Berks County.

What Pennsylvania adds on top of the federal rules.

The state's unemployment law follows the same shape. A homeowner who pays $1,000 or more in cash wages in any quarter of the current or preceding calendar year comes under the state's unemployment compensation law and pays state unemployment tax, and babysitters and other domestic workers paid less than $1,000 in a quarter aren't.

For that, you register as an employer with the state, online on myPATH, the Department of Revenue's site; that one registration also sets you up with Labor & Industry for unemployment tax. The state's flat 3.07 percent income tax withholding is tied to the federal rule: an employer required to withhold federal income tax also withholds the state's. Pennsylvania also requires employers to report a new employee who lives or works in the state.

Workers' compensation, the insurance that pays if someone is hurt on the job, doesn't cover domestic workers in Pennsylvania unless you've elected it through your insurance agent. Pennsylvania's own minimum wage act exempts domestic services in the employer's private home, so the floor a nanny is owed is the federal one: $7.25 an hour and federal overtime. A nanny who lives in your home is owed the minimum wage but not overtime.

A sitter who comes now and then is a different case. Babysitting done now and then, by someone whose line of work isn't babysitting, is outside the federal minimum wage and overtime rules. The federal rule's own measure of 'now and then' is usually no more than 20 hours a week across all the families the sitter works for, and someone who babysits as a full-time occupation isn't in that category. Pennsylvania's child labor act doesn't apply to babysitting, and the state says children under 14 may babysit.

Where Berks parents find a sitter or nanny.

The daycares in Berks County page lists the centers to call for a rate sheet before you commit to a nanny. Two national sitter sites each list Reading-area babysitters, one with 74 listed and the other with 100 active, and one of the two lists 60 nannies. A college-sitter app matches families with Reading-area students, including from Reading Area Community College and Albright College.

For a younger sitter, the Red Cross offers babysitting courses in Reading for ages 11 and up, online or in person; the in-person class is for ages 11 to 16 and runs about five hours in a day. The agency and au pair route is in our family services guide's note on nannies and au pairs.

Questions parents ask about babysitter pay.

Does a weekend sitter need any tax paperwork?

It depends on the year's total and the sitter's age. Social Security and Medicare taxes start when you pay any one household worker $3,000 or more in cash wages in 2026, and a sitter under 18 at any time during the year is outside those taxes unless household work is their principal occupation, which for a student it isn't. A sitter who works now and then, usually no more than 20 hours a week across all the families they work for, is also outside the federal minimum wage and overtime rules. The unemployment taxes, federal and state, have their own line: $1,000 or more in cash wages in a calendar quarter.

Do I have to pay a nanny overtime?

Yes. Pennsylvania's own minimum wage act exempts domestic services in the employer's private home, so the federal rules are the ones that apply: $7.25 an hour and federal overtime. A nanny who lives in your home is owed the minimum wage but not overtime.

Do I have to withhold income tax from a nanny's pay?

No. You're not required to withhold federal income tax from a household employee's wages; you withhold it only if the employee asks and you agree. Pennsylvania's rule for its flat 3.07 percent withholding is tied to the federal one: an employer required to withhold federal income tax also withholds the state's.

Pick the number before you send the text: $16 to $21 an hour for a sitter, $19 to $20 for a nanny, and more for a second child, a baby or a holiday. Once one person's pay for the year reaches the $3,000 line, the Social Security and Medicare taxes and the W-2 come with it; the dollar lines here are 2026's. The sitter waiting on your reply doesn't need any of that tonight; they need the rate, the hours and the address.

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