Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $30,830. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

With 2,199,900 jobs nationally, Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners make up 1.43% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 237,680 of those jobs, the top three states hold 27.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in Nevada (location quotient 1.54, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $30,830 at the 25th percentile, $35,930 at the middle, $41,650 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $21,470, a ratio of 1.8 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners runs from the $44,570 median in Massachusetts down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (237,680 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners stands number 12 by employment and number 779 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations, the group median wage is $44,730 across 10 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 20% less than its group median, and it supplies 48.9% of the group's 4,496,160 jobs. In 23 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $35,930, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 177,960 jobs, 8.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 393 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Ponce, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $22,270 a year, against $47,960 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $35,930 works out to $2,994 a month before taxes, $1,382 per biweekly paycheck, and $691 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($30,830) to the 75th ($41,650) is worth $10,820 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $39,523 would sit between the median ($35,930) and the 75th percentile ($41,650), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $30,830, is $5,100 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners, First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers, First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers, Pest Control Workers, Tree Trimmers and Pruners, Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.