Pest Control Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Pest Control Workers offer sit among all 96,110 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 96,110, or 0.06% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 12,290 jobs; the top three states sum to 33.4% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Carolina posts a location quotient of 1.90, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $32,460 or less, and one in ten earns $61,410 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $28,950. The mean ($45,800) versus median ($44,730) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 12,290 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Colorado would lead at $50,450. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Pest Control Workers stands number 279 by employment and number 646 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.1% of the group's 4,496,160 jobs. In 23 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $44,730, 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 4,230 jobs, 4.4% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Oklahoma City, OK posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,830 a year, against $54,400 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Pest Control Workers paycheck, gross, is $1,720 every two weeks on an annual $44,730, which is $3,728 a month and $860 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,060) to the 75th ($49,300) is worth $12,240 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $49,203 would sit between the median ($44,730) and the 75th percentile ($49,300), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,060, is $7,670 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners, First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers, First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers, Tree Trimmers and Pruners, Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation, Building Cleaning Workers, All Other. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.