BLS OEWS May 2025 · SOC 37-3011
How much do landscapers make?
Pay for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, an occupation of nearly a million people that swells and shrinks with the season.
- Median pay$39,150a year
- Median hourly$18.82an hour
- Mean pay$42,290a year
- Employed952,640nationally
OEWS reference week is May, which is close to peak season for this trade in most of the country. Winter headcount in the northern states is materially lower than the figure here.
What landscapers and groundskeepers earn, from the bottom tenth to the top
A single median hides the range, and in this trade the range is the useful part. These four figures are the published percentiles for occupation code 37-3011, not a calculation done here.
| Measure | Annual | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $31,150 | the bottom tenth earn less than this |
| Median | $39,150 | half earn more, half earn less |
| Mean | $42,290 | the average, pulled up by the top |
| 90th percentile | $56,730 | the top tenth earn more than this |
Hourly equivalents: $18.82 median, $20.33 mean
Where landscapers and groundskeepers are paid most, and where there are most of them
Five highest paying states
| State | Mean annual |
|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $51,200 |
| Massachusetts | $50,540 |
| Washington | $49,130 |
| California | $47,420 |
| Vermont | $47,340 |
Five largest employing states
| State | Employed |
|---|---|
| California | 106,180 |
| Florida | 86,040 |
| Texas | 63,430 |
| New York | 47,600 |
| Pennsylvania | 34,850 |
The two lists rarely overlap, and that is the point of showing both. A high mean wage usually tracks cost of living, while a high headcount tracks population. Neither on its own tells you where the work is.
SOC 37-3011 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about landscapers and groundskeepers
The reference week matters more for this occupation than for any other on the site.
The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics reference period is May, which is close to peak season for landscaping across most of the country. Winter headcount in the northern states is materially lower than the figure published here. The number is not wrong; it is a photograph taken in the busiest month, and reading it as a year round average overstates how many people the trade employs in February.
The distribution is compressed in the way outdoor manual work usually is, with a modest gap between the bottom tenth and the top tenth. What separates earnings here is closer to hours and season than to grade, which is consistent with a trade whose demand disappears for part of the year in half the country.
The supervisor code tells the rest of the story. Crew leaders earn substantially more at every point in the distribution, and there are far fewer of them. As with cleaning, the visible route to earning more in the federal data is a step into a supervisory grade that most of the workforce will not take, or out of employment altogether into the very large nonemployer half of the trade.
Seasonality is the whole marketing calendar in this trade, and the advertising window opens before homeowners are thinking about their gardens. The pairs worth banking are shot in the peak and published before it, which is the opposite of how it feels while the work is on.
Every figure quoted above appears in the tables on this page or is arithmetic on them. Nothing here forecasts, values a business or suggests a price, because none of the three is measurable from a wage survey.
Where these numbers came from
Public domain US federal statistics, fetched by hand and baked into this site rather than called at build time. If you quote a figure from this page, cite the agency rather than this site, and use the wording below.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national cross industry estimates, occupation 37-3011 Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers. Accessed 2026-08-01.
National, cross-industry estimates for wage and salary workers. Self-employed workers, owner-operators and chair or booth renters are not in scope.
bls.gov/oes and the published series files at download.bls.gov
How many of these businesses there are
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How much do landscapers make?
- The median wage for landscapers and groundskeepers in the United States is $39,150 a year, or $18.82 an hour. The mean is $42,290. The bottom tenth earn under $31,150 and the top tenth earn over $56,730. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation code 37-3011.
- Does this include self-employed workers?
- No, and that matters more in this trade than the number does. OEWS covers wage and salary workers only. Self-employed workers, owner-operators, chair renters and single-van businesses are outside the survey entirely, so this is what an employed person in this job is paid, not what everyone doing this work earns.
- Which state pays the most?
- District of Columbia, at a mean of $51,200 a year, followed by Massachusetts at $50,540. The five highest paying and five largest employing states are listed above, and a high mean usually reflects cost of living as much as opportunity.
- What does this actually tell a landscapers and groundskeeper running their own business?
- The reference week matters more for this occupation than for any other on the site. Seasonality is the whole marketing calendar in this trade, and the advertising window opens before homeowners are thinking about their gardens. The pairs worth banking are shot in the peak and published before it, which is the opposite of how it feels while the work is on.
- How current is this figure?
- It is the May 2025 release, which is the most recent Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data published by BLS. It was fetched and baked into this site on 1 August 2026. This page makes no live API call, so what you see is what was checked on that date.
Numbers persuade nobody. The pair does.
Every trade on this page sells the same way: a photograph of the problem beside a photograph of the result. Take the two, and Before and After Video Maker turns them into a 1080p video, a looping GIF or a still.