The investor’s spouse is excluded from qualifying employees for the direct job count.
Separate family activity from qualifying employment
The same exclusion covers the investor and sons or daughters. A spouse and unmarried children under 21 may generally seek derivative status, subject to applicable age-protection and other rules, but that family eligibility does not make their work count toward the required qualifying jobs.
Spouses included as derivatives obtain their status through the principal, and conditional permanent residence and its two-year period apply to the family as well, which matters when planning schooling, travel and any later filings. Keep the invested capital ring-fenced from money the family needs for school fees, housing, and ordinary costs, because a delayed exit is a financial event rather than an immigration one and does not by itself affect a derivative case.
A filed petition confers nothing, so a family cannot rely on it to justify living in the property, and a household member already lawfully present under some other basis remains governed by that basis rather than by the investment.