A personal care aide, often called a caregiver, helps home care clients bathe, dress, eat, get around and keep up the house, following a non-medical care plan. Shifts run from short visits to overnights and live-in care, paid for by families, Medicaid waivers or long-term care insurance.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, home health care agencies · BLS, May 2025
We're looking for a Personal Care Aide, often called a caregiver, to help our home care clients live safely at home. You'll help with bathing, dressing, meals, light housekeeping, errands, and company, following each client's care plan. Clients count on the same caregiver showing up on time, so reliability matters as much as skill.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Help clients bathe, dress, groom, and use the toilet, following their care plan.
Help clients move around the home and transfer safely, using the equipment listed in the care plan.
Make meals, do light housekeeping and laundry, and run errands such as groceries or the pharmacy.
Remind clients to take their medications; give hands-on help only where your state and our policies allow it.
Keep clients company and help them keep up their routines, hobbies, and appointments.
Tell the Client Care Coordinator about falls, changes in health or mood, or safety problems in the home.
Log tasks for each visit in [your app], and clock in and out there where your state or payer requires EVV.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Arrive on time for [2–4] client visits or one longer shift.
Check the care plan in [your app] for tasks and notes from the last caregiver.
Notice changes such as a new bruise, an uneaten meal, or more confusion than usual, and report them.
Leave the home tidy and safe, with the walker, phone, and water within reach.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Shifts worked as scheduled: [your target].
Late arrivals and early departures: [your target].
Care plan tasks documented each visit: [your target].
Client requests for a caregiver change: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
Completes any personal care aide training, certification, or registry listing your state requires, plus our orientation and any yearly training your state requires.
Passes a background check, and any health screening, as your state requires.
Reliable transportation to reach clients across [your service area], plus a valid driver's license and auto insurance if you drive clients or run errands.
Can follow a written care plan and record visits in a phone app.
Current CPR and first aid certification, or able to earn them during orientation.
6. Preferred Experience
Experience as a caregiver, CNA, or home health aide, or caring for a family member.
Experience with clients who have dementia or Parkinson's disease, or who use a wheelchair.
Open to overnight, weekend, or [live-in] shifts.
Speaks [a language many of our clients speak].
7. Physical Requirements
Standing, walking, bending, and reaching for most of a shift.
Helping clients stand, transfer, and move, and lifting up to [50] pounds with a gait belt or help.
Housework such as vacuuming, laundry, and changing beds.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Work alone in clients' homes and assisted living apartments in [your service area].
Shifts range from [2–4] hour visits to [8–12] hour shifts, overnights, and [live-in], including weekends and holidays.
Homes may have pets, smoking, stairs, or clutter; tell us your limits so we can match you well.
Our safety policy covers what to do if a client's home ever feels unsafe.
Mileage for errands and travel between clients: [your mileage policy].
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new personal care aide gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
How agency personal care differs from private caregiving
Families can hire a caregiver on their own. An agency caregiver works to a written care plan, under state training rules and federal wage rules that apply to the agency as the employer.
Your state sets the training
No federal rule sets minimum training for personal care aides, unlike the home health aide rules. PHI's 2025 review of all 50 states and D.C. found that seven states still have no training requirement at all. Others set training hours, a list of skills, a competency test or a state credential. Start with your state's home care licensing rules and each Medicaid program you bill. Source: PHI: Personal care aide training standards across the United States, 2025 update.
Federal overtime for agency caregivers may change
The Labor Department proposed in July 2025 to give home care agencies back the companionship and live-in exemptions for their caregivers, which a 2013 rule had taken away. As of October 2026 the change is not final. Your state's wage law can still call for minimum wage and overtime pay, so check it and the federal rule's status before you change how caregivers are paid. Source: Federal Register: Application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to Domestic Service (proposed rule, July 2, 2025).
Overnight shifts follow sleep-time rules
Federal hours-worked rules depend on the shift. On a shift under 24 hours, the caregiver is working even while allowed to sleep. On a shift of 24 hours or more, the agency and caregiver may agree to leave up to eight hours of sleep unpaid, if there is a proper bed and the caregiver usually sleeps through the night. Calls to duty are paid, and if sleep totals under five hours, the whole period is paid. Live-in caregivers have their own rules. Source: 29 CFR 785.22: Duty of 24 hours or more (Cornell LII).
Company is part of the care
Many clients live alone, and the caregiver may be the only person they see that day. Conversation, a short walk, a card game or a trip to the store matter as much as the bath. Caregivers also see what family on the phone can't, such as an uneaten lunch, a new bruise or more confusion than usual, and pass it to the coordinator.
Boundaries in a client's home
Families sometimes ask for jobs outside the care plan, offer gifts, or ask the caregiver to come back privately for cash. Write rules on gifts, money, use of the client's car and side work, and share them with clients and caregivers alike. A caregiver who knows to say 'let me check with the office' protects the client and the agency.
How much personal care aides make
The closest BLS group for personal care aides is home health and personal care aides. Home health and personal care aides who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $17.42 an hour ($36,230 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about the same as the $35,800 median for home health and personal care aides in all industries. About 1,079,060 of the 4,305,810 home health and personal care aides in that survey work for home health care agencies.
Hourly for visits and shifts, with mileage for errands and travel between clients. If you pay a day rate for live-in or round-the-clock shifts, check it against hours worked, the sleep-time rules and your state's wage law.
Home health care agencies
$36,230$36,230 median Middle half $28,400–$39,330 10th–90th $23,290–$43,900
All industries
$35,800$35,800 median Middle half $31,920–$39,470 10th–90th $27,040–$45,040
$10k$20k$30k$40k$50k$60k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Home health care agencies
$23,290
$28,400
$36,230
$39,330
$43,900
All industries
$27,040
$31,920
$35,800
$39,470
$45,040
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Shows up on time for the same clients week after week
Patient and kind with clients who are confused, lonely or set in their ways
Follows a written care plan and logs each task in a phone app
Speaks up about a fall, a bruise or a change in mood the same day
Cooks and cleans the way the client likes it done
Teach these on the job
Safe transfers with a gait belt
Dementia care basics, such as redirecting and calming
Your state's required training and your orientation
Your EVV and care notes app
Your rules on medication reminders and tasks caregivers may not do
Caregivers clock in, see the day's tasks and log them in the agency's home care app, such as WellSky Personal Care, AxisCare or AlayaCare, or in the state's EVV app for Medicaid clients. In the home they use the client's own gear: walkers, shower chairs, grab bars and sometimes a lift.
Personal care aide interview questions
They have their own page: 7 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
Each target in the blueprint is a blank to fill. Pull your own shift data for the last month or so, then raise the bar as scheduling and training improve.
Shifts worked as scheduled
Shifts worked divided by shifts assigned, from the scheduling system each pay period. Count call-offs and no-shows on their own, and note which shifts were added at short notice.
Late arrivals and early departures
EVV clock-ins after the start time and clock-outs before the end, counted each week. Ask about the pattern before you count against anyone; a client who sends the caregiver home early is a care plan question.
Care plan tasks documented each visit
Visits where every care plan task is marked done or has a reason it wasn't, divided by all visits. Spot-check the notes against what the client or family says happened.
Client requests for a caregiver change
Requests from clients or families to replace this caregiver, each with its reason written down. Separate fit issues, like schedule or personality, from care problems that call for coaching.
Career path
Family or private caregiverCares for a relative or neighbor and learns the work firsthand.
Personal Care AideGives non-medical care to agency clients under a written care plan.
Home health aidePasses federal aide training and a competency check to take Medicare cases.
Client care coordinatorMoves into the office to plan care and match caregivers with clients.
A personal care aide helps an older adult or a person with a disability with daily life at home: bathing, dressing, using the toilet, meals, laundry, errands and getting to appointments. The aide reminds clients about medicines, keeps them company and tells the office about changes. It is non-medical care, so tasks that need a nurse stay with the nurse.
How much does a personal care aide make?
Home health and personal care aides who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $17.42 an hour ($36,230 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $28,400 and $39,330 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
Does Medicare cover a personal care aide?
Not when personal care is all the person needs. Medicare's home health benefit doesn't cover help with bathing or dressing when that is the only care needed, and it doesn't cover care around the clock. Clients pay for personal care themselves, through long-term care insurance, or through a Medicaid waiver program when they qualify.
What training does a new caregiver need?
Whatever your state and each payer require, plus your own orientation. If your Medicare-certified agency provides Medicaid personal care through aide-only staff, federal rules say those caregivers must meet the state's standards and show they can do the tasks they will be given. Add hands-on practice with transfers, your app and your safety policy before the first solo shift.
Why do clients ask for a different caregiver?
Requests often come down to fit: late arrivals, a personality clash, meals or cleaning done differently than the client likes, or a caregiver on the phone during the shift. Ask what happened before you move anyone. Some fixes take one conversation; others need a new match. Track the reasons, since the same complaint from several clients points to training.
Can a personal care aide drive a client?
Only if your policy allows it. Check the caregiver's license and car insurance, decide whose car is used, and say how mileage is paid. Write down what happens after an accident before the first drive, since the answer depends on whose car it is and whose insurance applies.
