New nanny economy thrives on fast skills upgrading

Weeks before our second child was born in January, my wife found something that dampened our excitement: The costs for a month-long confinement nanny had soared and we could be priced out of a good one.

Before that I had heard that local nannies, commonly known as yuesao in Chinese, had raised their fees recently when China allowed all couples to have two children. I also knew some rich families paid more than 100,000 yuan ($15,313) for spa-like confinement complete with specialist care, massage and haute cuisine.

But I was still taken aback to learn that a live-in yuesao, a job usually held by rural women, could charge tens of thousands of yuan now.