Personal Care Aide Job Description Template
A personal care aide helps someone live at home: bathing, dressing, meals, medication reminders, light housekeeping and the company that keeps a person out of a facility. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 760,500 openings a year in this occupation — more than any other role on this site — and Boostpoint's own campaign data shows caregiver applicants are the cheapest and most willing to apply of any role family we publish. Reach is not the constraint in home care. Keeping people is.
What a personal care aide does
A personal care aide works in someone else’s home, usually alone, usually on a schedule set around that person’s day rather than a shift roster. The work is activities of daily living — bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, transfers and mobility — plus the instrumental ones that keep a household running: meals, light housekeeping, laundry, shopping and rides to appointments. Medication reminders are common; medication administration usually is not, and the line between them is set by your state, not by the job description.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups personal care aides with home health aides and reports them together: 4,677,100 jobs in 2025, growing 18% through 2035 — a projected increase of 847,300 positions — with about 760,500 openings a year. Most of those openings are replacement rather than growth, which is the number that should shape how you write this posting.
Pay varies more by setting than by title. The May 2025 medians run from $37,340 in residential developmental-disability facilities and $37,060 in continuing care retirement communities down to $36,230 in home healthcare services and $34,900 in individual and family services. That is a spread of $2,440 a year between the top and bottom setting for what a candidate reads as the same job — and it is the single most useful thing to put in your ad if you are at the upper end.
Personal care aide job description template
Copy this, replace everything in brackets, and delete any line you cannot honestly stand behind. The bracketed items are the ones candidates actually read — leaving them as brackets is worse than leaving them out.
Job title
Personal care aide
Summary
[Agency] is hiring personal care aides to support clients in their own homes in [city / service area]. You will help with bathing, dressing, meals, light housekeeping and companionship on a [set weekly schedule] with [consistent clients]. Pay is [$X.XX–$X.XX an hour] with [mileage / travel time paid].
Responsibilities
- Assist with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting and transfers
- Support safe mobility and use of [walker / wheelchair / lift equipment]
- Prepare meals to [dietary requirements] and assist with eating where needed
- Provide medication reminders as permitted by [state] scope of practice
- Light housekeeping, laundry, linens and keeping walkways clear
- Shopping, errands and transport to appointments [in your vehicle / agency vehicle]
- Observe and report changes in condition, mood, appetite or skin integrity
- Document each visit in [system] before leaving the home
Requirements
- 18 or older and legally authorized to work
- High school diploma or equivalent [or willing to complete our training]
- Completion of [state-required training and competency evaluation] — we pay for it
- Pass a background check and [state registry] check
- Reliable transport and a valid driver’s license for [service area]
- Able to lift and assist [X] lb and be on your feet for a [X]-hour visit
Preferred
- Prior experience with [dementia / hospice / developmental disabilities]
- Current CPR and first aid certification
- [CNA or HHA certification]
- Experience with [scheduling or EVV app]
- Second language spoken in our service area: [language]
Schedule and pay
- [Set weekly schedule with the same clients — not a rotating roster]
- [Guaranteed hours] with [minimum visit length]
- [Mileage paid at $X.XX a mile and travel time between clients paid]
- [Weekend and holiday differential]; [overtime available and voluntary]
- [Weekly pay]
Benefits
- Health, dental and vision from day [1 / 30 / 60] at [X] hours a week
- Paid time off that accrues from your first visit
- [401(k) with X% match]
- [Paid training, certification and renewal]; [career path to CNA or HHA]
- [Referral bonus of $X for a caregiver who stays 90 days]
What the role actually requires, and what your state decides
Most of what governs this role is set by your state and by whether your agency is certified, not by the job title. These are the six things to settle before the posting goes live.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Training | BLS lists short-term on-the-job training, but aides working for a certified home health or hospice agency must complete formal training and pass a standardized test. The federal standard is 75 hours: our home health aide job description has the rule and the seven jurisdictions that exceed it. If you are Medicare- or Medicaid-certified, that is you. |
| State certification | Where the state requires it, the aide must complete training and pass the test before working unsupervised. Say in the ad whether you pay for it and whether the candidate can start while completing it. |
| Background checks | A background check and a competency evaluation are common and vary by state. Name the check in the ad so nobody withdraws at day three. |
| CPR and first aid | May be required depending on state and agency. Cheap to provide, and worth naming as a paid benefit rather than a barrier. |
| Physical demands | Transfers, lifting and long periods standing. Name the actual weight and the equipment available — vague physical requirements screen out people who could do the job and let in people who cannot. |
| Transport | Most postings require a license and a car because the work moves between homes. If you pay mileage and travel time, that belongs in the first three lines, not the benefits list. |
How to customize it for your setting
Home care agencies
Your competition is the agency two towns over paying the same rate, so compete on the schedule instead. Consistent clients, a guaranteed minimum and paid travel time are worth more to a caregiver than twenty cents an hour, and almost nobody puts them in the ad.
Home health and hospice
You are in the formal-training bracket, so treat the training as the offer: paid, scheduled, and with a named start date. A candidate who has been told “you’ll need certification” without being told who pays is a candidate you lose to the agency that answered that question.
Senior living and CCRCs
Your BLS median is the second-highest of any setting at $37,060. If you are at or above it, put the number in the ad. If you are below it, lead with the building — one location, no driving, a team down the hall — because that is a real advantage over home visits.
Developmental disability and DSP settings
The residential developmental-disability median is the highest at $37,340, and the work is genuinely different from elder care. Say so. A posting that reads like generic home care will fill with people who leave in three weeks.
What it costs to reach personal care aides on social
Our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark publishes a caregiver and home care role family, so this page can quote a real figure rather than a neighboring one. Across 34 campaigns in that family the median cost per applicant was $3.76, the middle half of campaigns landed between $2.99 and $5.83, and the blended average was $3.87.
Two of those numbers matter more than the price. The apply rate is 31% and the click-through rate 2.32% — both the highest of the fifteen role families we publish. Caregiver campaigns also buy attention at a higher price than CDL driver campaigns ($27.88 per thousand impressions against $17.88) and still deliver applicants for a seventh of the cost, because seven times as many people who click go on to finish the form. Set that against 760,500 openings a year and the conclusion is uncomfortable but useful: getting applications is the easy part of home care hiring. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire, and in this role family the gap between the two is where the whole problem lives.
The hiring side of this role — where caregivers actually come from, what a home care campaign costs and why they leave — is covered on our home health aide recruiting, home care agency recruiting and caregiver turnover pages.
Writing the ad version
The description above is a document. The ad is forty words that have to survive a thumb moving at speed, and almost none of the document belongs in it. Lead with the schedule and the service area, because those are what a caregiver is actually choosing between: “Personal care aide, [town] and [town], set weekly schedule, same clients, mileage and travel time paid, $XX.XX an hour.” Pay, hours, geography, and one thing your competitor down the road does not offer.
The apply rate in this role family is already 31% — the highest we publish — so the ad is rarely the bottleneck. What breaks is the hour after the click: a form that asks for an employment history, an application that takes ten minutes, a callback on Thursday for someone who applied on Tuesday. Our candidate conversion rate guide covers where that leaks, and fifteen worked ad examples are in our help wanted ad examples library.
Frequently asked questions
What does a personal care aide do?
A personal care aide helps someone live independently at home. That means activities of daily living — bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, transfers and mobility — plus meals, light housekeeping, laundry, shopping and transport to appointments, and the observation and reporting that catches a change in condition early. Medication reminders are usual; administering medication generally is not, and where that line sits is decided by your state rather than by the job description.
How much does a personal care aide make?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median at $17.21 an hour, or $35,800 a year (May 2025 data; the occupational page was modified August 27, 2026). Setting matters more than title: the May 2025 medians run from $37,340 in residential developmental-disability facilities and $37,060 in continuing care retirement communities down to $36,230 in home healthcare services and $34,900 in individual and family services.
What qualifications does a personal care aide need?
Typically a high school diploma or equivalent, though some positions do not require one, plus short-term on-the-job training. The exception matters: aides working for a certified home health or hospice agency must complete formal training and pass a standardized test, and where a state requires certification the aide must pass it before working unsupervised. Background checks, competency evaluations and CPR or first aid certification are common and vary by state.
Is there a shortage of personal care aides?
The occupation is projected to grow 18% between 2025 and 2035 — an increase of 847,300 positions — with about 760,500 openings a year against 4,677,100 existing jobs. That is the largest annual openings figure of any occupation we write about. Most of it is replacement rather than growth, which is why agencies that fix retention usually find the hiring problem was never a shortage of applicants.
Other job description templates
See all job description templates — free, editable templates for frontline, trades, healthcare and warehouse roles.
Hiring caregivers?
The job description is the document; the ad is the thing that gets read. We write it, run it where caregivers are actually scrolling, and report what each applicant cost — cost per applicant, not cost per hire.
Pay, employment, outlook, education, training and certification requirements: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Home Health and Personal Care Aides (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 employment and May 2025 wage data, including medians by industry), read August 29, 2026. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — caregiver and home care role family, 34 campaigns, advertising costs only. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.