The Queen Of England Is Hiring!

Domestic workers are notoriously poorly paid. But you'd think that the maid to the Queen of England might fare better than the typical housekeeper. But that's not how it works with the British Royal family, who employs a total of 1,200 workers. The official website for the British Monarchy has just posted a help-wanted advertisement for a housekeeper at the Queen's Holyroodhouse residence in Edinburgh, Scotland. The pay? £12,000, or $18,000 for 37.5 hours of work per week. (The pay -- roughly $9.60 an hour, assuming 50 weeks work a year --is just around the British minimum wage.)

The Queen, for her part, is the recent beneficiary of a 5 percent income increase next year, as the Telegraph reported, which means she's slated to receive £37.9 million, or $58 million. But the pay for this housekeeping position is in line with other recent openings posted by the Windsors; last year the Windsor family was hiring a housekeeper to clean Buckingham Palace and was getting paid the equivalent of $22,000 a year.

The Holyroodhouse gig pay is about the average pay for British maids and housekeepers, according to PayScale.com. But it does come with some significant perks; the Holyroodhouse job comes with free lodging at the residence, which of course would help offset any strain caused by the low pay.