The Brexit warning hiding in a Mayfair housekeeper's pay packet

The author, podcaster and entrepreneur, Scott Galloway, has lived in London for just over four years. He was recently talking on his Raging Moderates podcast and delivered some seemingly harsh words.

“The thing I would notice about London is that it's what I would refer to as a ‘butler economy’,” he said. “All that wealth was created somewhere else and the only people making money in London are people servicing that wealth: hospitality, money managers, hotels, bars and accountants helping people set up offshore accounts. The economy here is not growing. Brexit expedited that lack of growth.”

While he went on to say he remains bullish on the UK economy, one London business has been quietly tracking that sentiment of the ultra-wealthy for a decade. Its order book tells a story. And recruitment agency Morgan & Mallet has watched it unfold from the inside.

In this article, we will cover:

• How a shrinking European workforce reshaped pay and hiring timelines for household staff
• The combined impact of Brexit and non-dom reform on London's household economy
• How Morgan & Mallet adapted its own business model in response
• What founders can learn about resilience when a core market shifts beneath them

It was launched in London in 2015 by Morgan Richez and Laurine Mallet. The household staff and hospitality agency places staff in roles ranging from nannies and luxury yacht crew to estate managers and butlers for distinguished private residences and establishments.

When setting up their business, Mallet described London as “pragmatic” and a great and easy place to launch the business. Today, it is based in France but has operations throughout Europe, the Middle East, the US and South Africa and fills around 40 roles a month.

The company’s typical household clientele are high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, so it has inadvertently become a bellwether for the sentiment of this affluent population.

The company released a report titled Beyond the Butler in 2025, which drew from its database of over 200,000 candidates and thousands of placements across its global operation. It found that this tight market has seen salaries forced upward to attract local and global talent.

“Housekeeper salaries in London have moved up by at least 20 per cent since Brexit,” says Richez. “Inflation and the post-Covid labour squeeze played their part, but the main driver was the loss of the workforce that used to do these roles. Portuguese, Spanish and Polish staff made up a large share of London's household sector, and a lot of them went home after 2016.”

Richez argues that the pool has not been replaced. The candidates who stayed took advantage of this, knowing that they are now in a position to set the salary rather than negotiate against it. Five or six years ago, a good live-out housekeeper in Belgravia or Mayfair would be around £35,000 to £40,000. Today, the same role sits comfortably between £50,000 and £80,000.

The impact of Brexit was felt more on Morgan & Mallet’s clients than on its business.

“We work in a niche market and our clients don't have just one single property,” says Mallet. “If a client is going to leave the UK, we are not really worried because we know they’ve got other properties and they need staff for them.”

The company itself shifted its strategic business focus to the US, the Middle East and Europe. As the freedom of movement was hindered and visa regulations were introduced, candidates from Europe looking for work ruled out the UK as an option, resulting in a shrinking talent pool.

The squeeze shows up not only in pay but in time. Before Brexit, Morgan & Mallet could place a butler in a London household in around two weeks. “Now it is closer to three,” says Richez. “The available pool of trained, English-speaking, right-to-work-cleared candidates is smaller, so the search runs longer.”

The same pressure has reshaped demand for nannies, particularly native English-speaking ones, where appetite from Continental clients now outstrips what the UK can supply.

Now, Brexit isn’t the only headwind pushing the ultra-wealthy away from British shores. In April 2025, the Labour government abolished its non-dom regime, the centuries-old arrangement that let wealthy residents shelter overseas income from UK tax. In its place came a stricter, residence-based system.

The change has been widely blamed for an exodus of high-net-worth individuals, with one frequently cited estimate putting net millionaire departures from the UK at around 16,500 in 2025, though the true scale is fiercely contested and several analysts argue the flight has been overstated.

As Morgan & Mallet’s clients relocate to lower-tax jurisdictions, such as the UAE and Italy, demand for household staff follows them out of London… and the UK's loss becomes another market's gain.

As with all businesses facing fluctuating geopolitical factors, the company has rolled with the punches, moved and followed wealthy, mobile clients to wherever they now choose to base themselves.

For Mallet, the longer-term cost of Brexit is harder to quantify but no less real. She still rates London as one of the great places to start a company but believes Brexit has dulled the UK’s standing as Europe’s natural home for business and wealth. “If I give my opinion as a businesswoman, I would say it’s been negative,” she says. “But perhaps for a British citizen, it’s a real benefit…”

For leaders watching where the world’s wealth chooses to settle, the distinction between what is good for a country and what is good for its businesses may be the sharpest question the last decade has left behind.