The employment of domestic workers, especially women, is widely discussed in the foreign literature. However, little is known about employment of female domestic workers in Russia. The paper looks at the specifics of the recruitment of the female domestic workers and their main areas of employment in the context of their origin (local workers, internal migrants, foreign migrants). The empirical basis of the study is data of a household survey conducted in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. We found that local and migrant female domestic workers occupy different employment niches with migrants being more likely to be hired by low income households. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the supply of foreign workers, and the cost of their labor has increased.
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