How to Find a Nanny in Los Angeles

What is different about hiring here, and how to find someone you can hand the keys, and the car, to.

Los Angeles is a large and active market for nannies, but it has a character all its own, and the families who hire well here understand it before they begin. Three things set it apart.

The first is driving. Los Angeles is built around the car, and in most households a nanny who cannot drive confidently, with a clean record and often the family's children in the back, is simply not workable. Where a New York family may never need their nanny behind the wheel, in Los Angeles it is frequently the first requirement, not the last. The same geography means commute and neighborhood matter enormously: a wonderful candidate forty-five minutes away in traffic is a different proposition than one nearby.

The second is privacy. Los Angeles has a high concentration of public figures, in entertainment and beyond, and with them a level of sensitivity around the home that few other cities match. Confidentiality agreements are common, discretion is assumed, and references and background are scrutinized with particular care. A household here is often a private world, and the nanny becomes one of the very few people inside it.

The third is the law. California has some of the strongest protections in the country for household employees, including overtime and other wage rules, and a nanny is an employee rather than a contractor. The obligations are specific and they change, so the right step is to work with a household-payroll service or an employment professional rather than guess. We are preparing a dedicated guide on this.

As for the routes themselves, they are familiar: word of mouth within tight industry and parent circles, online platforms that offer reach in exchange for doing all the vetting yourself, and agencies that recruit to a defined brief and present only candidates already checked and interviewed. Pay tracks the cost of the city and the demands of the role, with experienced career nannies commanding strong rates and the most specialized, those with languages, newborn expertise, or years of high-profile experience, considerably more.

If you would rather not run a discreet, thorough search across a sprawling city yourself, that is precisely what we do: a short, well-matched slate of vetted professionals, chosen to your brief, with the placement guaranteed. It is what families come to Nannies + more…® for.