Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($26,270) to the 90th ($42,370). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 195,360, or 0.13% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 22,630 jobs; the top three states sum to 27.0% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Nevada posts a location quotient of 2.16, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $16,100 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($42,370) is 1.6 times the 10th percentile ($26,270), a gap of $16,100 a year. The mean of $33,990 sitting above the median of $33,800 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers runs from the $39,220 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (22,630 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers stands number 165 by employment and number 809 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 27% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 24 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $33,800, 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 13,550 jobs, 6.9% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 369 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $23,710 a year, against $44,580 in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO. 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

As a household number, $33,800 a year is $2,817 a month gross, $1,300 every two weeks, $650 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($29,530) to the 75th ($36,760) is worth $7,230 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $2,817 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $37,180 would sit between the median ($33,800) and the 75th percentile ($36,760), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $29,530, is $4,270 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Structural Metal Fabricators and Fitters, Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood, Engine and Other Machine Assemblers, Print Binding and Finishing Workers, Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.