A cleaner takes home about $17 an hour, and it barely matters which way they are employed. BLS puts the median for the occupation at $17.07, against $24.51 for every occupation in America. So if you pay $40 an hour, the person doing the work is not earning $40 an hour, and the gap is not greed.More
The interesting part is that you get to the same answer down two completely different roads. Down the first, an agency employs the cleaner: they pay the median wage, and $17.07 of your $40 reaches the person with the mop. The rest is the insurance, the bonding, the supervision, the scheduling, the cover when somebody is ill, the payroll tax the employer pays, and the agency's own margin. Down the second road there is no agency at all, so surely the independent cleaner keeps your whole $40? They do not. To take home what an EMPLOYED cleaner takes home, an independent has to bill about $37.63 an hour. They now pay BOTH halves of payroll tax, because there is no employer to pay the other 7.65%. They do not bill the hours they spend quoting, invoicing, chasing and driving between houses. They buy their own supplies, their own vacuum and their own car. And they get no paid holiday and no sick pay. That is 2.2 times the employed wage just to stand still, and it is exactly the same arithmetic our freelance-rate page does for a designer. Two roads, one destination: about $17 an hour reaches the person cleaning your house, and everything between that and what you pay is real cost.
What you are paying, an hour
$40
To the cleaner, if an agency employs them at the occupation's median wage$60
A cleaner takes home about $17 an hour, and it barely matters which way they are employed.
BLS puts the median for the occupation at $17.07, against $24.51 for every occupation in America. Through an agency,
that is what reaches the person with the mop. Independently, they have to bill about $37.63 an hour just to end up in
the same place, which is 2.2 times the employed wage.More
Why the independent needs more than double. They pay BOTH halves of payroll tax, because
there is no employer paying the other 7.65%. They do not bill the hours they spend quoting, invoicing, chasing late
payers and driving between houses. They buy their own supplies, their own vacuum and their own car. And they get no
paid holiday and no sick pay, so a week off is a week unpaid. It is exactly the arithmetic our freelance-rate page does for
a designer, and it lands in exactly the same multiple.
And the agency's share is not profit either. Out of it come the employer's half of payroll tax,
liability insurance, bonding, supervision, scheduling, the cover when somebody is ill, the training, the supplies and
the vetting. Whether what is left over is a fair margin is a judgement, and we do not know: there is no sourced price
to compare yours against and a comparison to nothing is worth nothing.
The number people forget to multiply. A team of TWO who are gone in ninety minutes have given you
three hours of labour, not ninety minutes. Your effective hourly rate is half what you thought it was. If you are
comparing two quotes and only one of them tells you how many cleaners are coming, you are not comparing them yet.
Read the wage with the usual warning. BLS's survey EXCLUDES the self-employed, and a great many
house cleaners are exactly that, so the 860,670 it counts are the ones on somebody's payroll.
§ 02 Where your money goes
What you are paying, an hour of labour$40.00
Share reaching the cleaner, IF employed at the median wage42.7%
What an INDEPENDENT at your rate takes home in a year$37,852
What you pay across a year$3,360
The wage is BLS's and it is exact. The tax is the IRS's and it is statutory. The independent's working year (48 weeks, 60% billable, $2,000 of expenses) is OURS and is declared. What you pay and how long it takes are yours, because no federal survey collects the price of one visit to one house. The industry's HOURS are published (BLS CES, CEU6056172002, monthly since 2006), this page once said they were not, and a revenue per employee-hour could be built from them. We have not built it, and that is a gap in this page rather than in the data.
Recommended next steps
Somewhere between the independent's break-even and about $60 a person-hour is where most cleaning lands, whether through an agency or not. Roughly $17 of it is the cleaner, and the rest is payroll tax, insurance, bonding, supervision, cover and supplies. That is a business, not a markup.
A house cleaner earns a median of $17.07 an hour, against $24.51 for every occupation in America.More
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, SOC 37-2012 (Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners), May 2025. 860,670 employed. They earn well below the US median. And BLS excludes the self-employed, so that count is the cleaners on somebody's payroll.
An INDEPENDENT cleaner has to bill about $37.63 an hour to take home what an EMPLOYED one takes home.More
That is 2.2 times the employed wage, and every reason for it is real. They pay both halves of payroll tax, because there is no employer paying the other 7.65%. They do not invoice the quoting, the chasing, the bookkeeping or the drive between houses. They buy their own supplies, vacuum and car. And they have no paid holiday, so a week off is a week unpaid. It is the same arithmetic that a freelance designer faces, and it produces the same multiple.
So $40 an hour is not a $40 wage, whichever road it takes.More
Through an agency, about $17 of it reaches the cleaner and the rest is payroll tax, insurance, bonding, supervision, scheduling, cover and margin. Independently, $40 an hour leaves them taking home a little more than an employed cleaner and not much more. Two completely different routes, and both of them arrive at roughly the same person earning roughly the same money.
A team of two who finish in ninety minutes have given you three hours of labour.More
This is the multiplication people forget, and it halves your effective hourly rate at a stroke. If you are comparing two quotes and one of them does not say how many cleaners are coming, you have not started comparing them. Ask how many people and how long, and only then divide.
The wage varies 2.4-fold by state, from $10.32 an hour to $24.81.More
Guam at the bottom and Hawaii at the top, across the 54 areas for which BLS publishes a figure for this occupation. A missing area is a suppressed cell, not a zero, and we do not read it as one.
Nobody publishes the price of one clean. The HOURS are published, and this page used to tell you they were not.More
The correction is worth reading, because it is the mistake this site keeps making. BLS gives the wage and no billed rate. The Economic Census gives receipts for janitorial services and no hours column, which is true. We then wrote that this left no denominator and no constructible hourly rate at all, which was false: BLS's Current Employment Statistics has published average weekly hours for janitorial services, at that exact code, monthly since 2006, series CEU6056172002. An industry-wide revenue per employee-hour is constructible from Census receipts over those hours, and this page has not yet built it. That is a gap in the page, not in the data. When it is built it will be a CLASS figure: gross of payroll tax, insurance, supplies and the van, spread over every employee rather than only the person with the mop, and it will bound nobody's quote. What genuinely is not published is the price of one visit to one house.
Sourced: the wage (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC
37-2012: median $17.07/hr, $35,510/yr, 860,670 employed) and the tax (IRS: 15.3% self-employment tax on 92.35% of net
earnings). Ours, and declared: the independent's working year, which we take as 48 weeks x 40 hours
with 60% of them billable, and $2,000 of supplies, vacuum and car. Yours: what you pay, and the hours
it takes.More
The conditional matters and we are not going to hide it. The page says what share of your
bill reaches the cleaner IF the cleaner is employed at the occupation's MEDIAN. We do not know what your agency pays.
It may pay more, and a good one probably does. What we can say precisely is what the occupation's median is, which is
$17.07, and that is a fact rather than an accusation.
The independent's break-even is a MODEL, and here is every assumption in it. 48 working weeks,
40 hours a week, 60% of them actually invoiced, $2,000 of expenses, and the IRS's self-employment tax. Change any of
those and the $37.63 moves. What does NOT move is the shape: an independent must bill roughly twice the employed wage
to take home the employed wage, and that holds for every occupation we have run it on.
Nobody publishes the price of one clean, and here is what we got wrong about why. BLS gives the wage
and no billed rate. The Economic Census gives receipts for janitorial services and carries no hours column, which is
true. From that we concluded there was no denominator and no hourly rate could be built at all, and THAT WAS FALSE.
BLS's Current Employment Statistics has published average weekly hours for janitorial services, at that exact code,
monthly since 2006 (series CEU6056172002), with production and nonsupervisory hours going back to 1990. The
denominator was never missing. We had searched one agency, found it lacking, and announced a fact about the world.
A gross revenue per employee-hour for the industry IS constructible, Census receipts over CES hours, the way our own
lawn-mowing page builds one. THIS PAGE HAS NOT BUILT IT YET, and that is a gap in this page rather than a gap in the
data. When it is built it will be a CLASS figure and it will bound nobody's quote. What stays genuinely unpublished
is the price of one VISIT to one house, which no federal survey collects, and that is why the bill is still your
input.
Where every number above comes from
Wage data
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners (SOC 37-2012): 860,670 employed, median $17.07/hr, $35,510/yr, 10th percentile $13.29/hr, 90th percentile $23.35/hr. All occupations (SOC 00-0000): median $24.51/hr
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, by state. Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners: a median wage published for 54 areas, from $10.32/hr in Guam to $24.81/hr in Hawaii
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics FAQ: 'Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No.' A great many house cleaners are self-employed, so the 860,670 count above is the ones on a payroll
IRS, Self-Employment Tax. 15.3% (12.4% social security plus 2.9% Medicare) levied on 92.35% of net earnings. An employee pays half and the employer pays the other half; a self-employed cleaner pays both
BLS, Current Employment Statistics, series CEU6056172002: average weekly hours of all employees in janitorial services (NAICS 56172), monthly since 2006, with production and nonsupervisory hours (CEU6056172007) beside them. This is the denominator this page spent a version insisting did not exist, and it is why the page now says an industry rate is constructible rather than impossible
Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.
The share reaching the cleaner is CONDITIONAL on the agency paying the occupation's median.
We do not know what your agency pays. It may well pay more, and a good one probably does. What is a fact is the occupation's median, which is $17.07 an hour. The page says IF, and it means IF.
The independent's $37.63 break-even is a MODEL, and every assumption in it is on the page.
48 working weeks, 40 hours, 60% of them billable, $2,000 of expenses, and the IRS's self-employment tax. Change any of them and the number moves. What does not move is the shape: about twice the employed wage, just to stand still.
The gap between what you pay and what the cleaner earns is not profit.
Payroll tax, liability insurance, bonding, supervision, scheduling, cover for illness, training, vetting, supplies. Calling the remainder profit would be the easiest lie on this page and we are not going to tell it.
Hours means PERSON-hours. Two cleaners for two hours is four.
It is the multiplication everybody forgets, and forgetting it halves your apparent hourly rate.
Frequently asked questions
How much does house cleaning cost?
Nobody publishes a national price, so the useful question is not what it costs but where the money goes. BLS puts a cleaner's median wage at $17.07 an hour, below the $24.51 US median. So if you are paying $40 an hour of labour, roughly $17 of it reaches the person with the mop when an agency employs them, and the rest is payroll tax, insurance, bonding, supervision, cover and margin. Put your own bill in above, remembering that hours means person-hours: two cleaners for two hours is four.
Is it cheaper to hire an independent cleaner than an agency?
Often a little, but far less than people expect, and the reason is worth understanding. An independent has no agency taking a cut, so it looks as though they should keep the lot. But they pay BOTH halves of payroll tax, because there is no employer to pay the other 7.65%. They do not invoice the quoting, the chasing, the bookkeeping or the drive between houses. They buy their own supplies, vacuum and car. And they get no paid holiday. To take home what an EMPLOYED cleaner takes home they have to bill about $37.63 an hour, which is 2.2 times the employed wage. That is not a markup, it is arithmetic, and it is the same arithmetic every freelancer faces.
What does a house cleaner actually earn?
A median of $17.07 an hour, or $35,510 a year, which is well below the $24.51 median for every occupation in America. That is BLS's figure for Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners, SOC 37-2012, from its survey of employers. One warning: BLS excludes the self-employed, and a great many house cleaners are exactly that, so the 860,670 it counts are the ones on somebody's payroll.
Am I being overcharged for cleaning?
We do not know, and we are not going to imply it, because there is no sourced price to compare yours against and a comparison to nothing is worth nothing. What the page can tell you is what you are paying per person-hour, and roughly how much of it reaches the cleaner if they are employed at the occupation's median. If that share looks small, remember what comes out of the rest before anyone takes a margin: the employer's half of payroll tax, liability insurance, bonding, supervision, scheduling, cover when somebody is ill, training and vetting.
Why do two cleaners cost the same as one?
They do not, and this is the mistake that quietly doubles your hourly rate. A team of two who are done in ninety minutes have given you three person-hours of labour, and that is what you are paying for. If a quote does not tell you how many people are coming and how long they will stay, you cannot compare it with anything. Ask both questions, multiply, and only then divide your bill by the answer.
