WHO’S that gorgeous woman speaking French like Brig itte Bardot and teaching someone else’s brats calculus while looking as if she just walked off a runway?
Chances are that chic lady in the park getting puked on by little Gabriel or Tiffany is the most indis pensable member of the labor force: the nanny.
The recession has come to the Upper East Side – home to more spoiled, young terrors than you can fit inside Dalton. The position was once the province of domestic work ers from Ireland or St. Lucia, but Manhattan is seeing an unprecedented glut of sophisticated, overeducated and un deremployed women desperate for work. Any work. And being a nanny has its ad vantages.
At least, that’s what these glorified baby sitters tell themselves.
Take Emily Col lins. She came to New York from Florida two years ago to pursue a ca reer. But she was laid off from her job as an execu tive assistant. Immediately hired by a fash ion company, she was laid off again, just before Christmas.
Suddenly, the jobs to which she applied had dozens of applicants, all willing to work for a pittance. “I can’t live on $35,000,” she said. “I was making 50 before.”
A return to Florida beckoned. Then she got another idea. She applied to the Absolute Best Care nanny agency on the Upper East Side, which provides domestic workers to boldfaced names.
“I never dreamed I’d be here,” said Emily. “Some days I actually feel ashamed about what I do. I tell someone, ‘I’m a nanny.’ They say to me, ‘Don’t you have a bachelor’s degree? Aren’t you 25?’ ”
Well, guess what? What Emily loses in mental stimulation, she makes up in salary. Top nannies command anywhere from $650 to a whopping $1,500 a week. That’s after taxes. And employers take them around the world.
Whitney Boughton, also 25, worked in sales for Wachovia. Last summer, she quit, betting that working as an assistant to a big macher on Shelter Island might lead to better things.
But summer ended. And banking jobs dried up. “I read ‘The Nanny Diaries’ in high school,” said Whitney. “I used to think, ‘Who would do that?’ ” Well, now she’s a full-time nanny.
Among its 9,000 registered nannies, Absolute Best Care has seen a 10 to 20 percent leap in former members of the rat race. “Maybe we would get one or two of these types of nanny a month,” said owner Douglas Kozinn. “Now we’re getting four or five.”
But Jerry Bohne, owner of the Adele Post agency, warns that the glut of applicants drives down salaries, and the glitzier the gene pool, the less child-care experience.
In this recession, it’s a buyer’s market. Let the buyer beware.