Janitorial Wages in Tennessee (2026)

Tennessee's $15.01/hr janitorial median trails the national benchmark by $2.26/hr, but Nashville's $18.17/hr building/grounds mean signals a two-speed market where the Music City boomtown sharply outpaces rural and western Tennessee.

CurrentStatute: BLS OEWS May 2024 (SOC 37-2011) + No state minimum wage law; federal FLSA $7.25/hr applies (Tennessee Code Ann. §50-2-103 mirrors federal rate)Effective: Federal $7.25/hr — Tennessee has no independent state minimum wage statuteLast reviewed: Q2 2026

Tennessee's janitorial workforce earns a statewide mean and median hourly wage of $15.01 (BLS OEWS May 2024, SOC 37-2011), trailing the national median by approximately $2.26/hr and reflecting the state's $7.25/hr federal-floor-only minimum wage. Tennessee has never enacted a state minimum wage supplement, leaving a $7.76/hr gap between the legal floor and prevailing market rates — the second-widest such gap in this batch after Wyoming.

What employers should plan for

Floor: $7.25/hr federal (Tennessee Code Ann. §50-2-103 mirrors federal rate; Tennessee has not independently raised this floor since its enactment). No state-level CPI indexing exists.
Local floors: No Tennessee city or county has enacted a local minimum wage ordinance. Tennessee law does not preempt local minimum wages explicitly, but no municipality has exercised this authority for private-sector wages.
Loaded labor rate: Commercial cleaning bids in Tennessee run approximately $22–$28/hr total loaded cost. Nashville-area bids command a significant premium at $27–$34/hr given the labor market tightness and higher prevailing wages. Workers' comp burden is below average nationally.
Workers' comp class 9014 base rate approximately $1.52/$100 payroll — one of the lower NCCI-filed rates nationally for this classification, representing a meaningful cost advantage for Tennessee-based operations.

High-wage metros vs. low-wage metros

Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin MSA dramatically leads the state: BLS May 2024 data shows the building and grounds cleaning occupational group averaging $18.17/hr, suggesting SOC 37-2011 janitor wages in the $17.50–$18.00/hr range — more than $2.50/hr above the state median. Nashville's explosion as a corporate relocation destination (Amazon HQ2 office, Oracle campus, AllianceBernstein) has severely tightened the labor market for all service occupations. Knoxville MSA (University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Lab) runs mid-range at an estimated $14.50–$15.50/hr. On the lower end, Memphis TN-MS-AR MSA — despite its size — shows a building/grounds group mean of $16.93/hr per BLS May 2024, with estimated SOC 37-2011 wages of $15.00–$16.00/hr reflecting the cross-state wage influence of Mississippi and Arkansas labor markets. The smaller Clarksville TN-KY MSA historically ran at $13.00–$13.50/hr (BLS 2022 data), one of the state's lowest commercial cleaning wage markets.

Wage percentile distribution (BLS OEWS 2024)

10th percentile: $11.38/hr
25th percentile: $13.57/hr
Median (50th): $15.01/hr
75th percentile: $17.48/hr
90th percentile: $20.73/hr

The $9.35/hr spread from 10th to 90th reflects Tennessee's sharp geographic bifurcation — the 10th percentile at $11.38/hr captures lower-wage rural and secondary-city markets (Jackson, Johnson City, Clarksville), while the 90th percentile at $20.73/hr reflects experienced cleaners in Nashville's premium commercial facilities. The median's position ($15.01/hr) is closer to the 25th than 75th percentile, suggesting a right-skewed distribution driven by Nashville's wage premium.

Union presence

Tennessee is a right-to-work state with private-sector union density approximately 4–5%. SEIU 32BJ has no Tennessee commercial cleaning operations. The state's union presence is primarily concentrated in legacy manufacturing (UAW at Volkswagen Chattanooga; IAM at Boeing repair facilities) and has minimal overlap with commercial cleaning services. No pattern bargaining agreements influence Tennessee janitorial wages. The commercial cleaning sector is entirely market-driven.

What this means for bid math

Tennessee's combination of a moderate $15.01/hr median and one of the nation's lowest NCCI 9014 workers' comp rates ($1.52/$100) creates a favorable cost structure — particularly outside Nashville. Total loaded labor for a standard Tennessee commercial cleaning contract runs approximately $22–$26/hr (1.48–1.73× base), rising to $28–$34/hr for Nashville institutional or Class A office contracts. The Nashville/non-Nashville wage split ($17.50+ vs. $13.50–$15.00) is the most important variable in state pricing; statewide average contracts that treat Tennessee as uniform will misprice Nashville work by 15–20%. Budget for Nashville wages tracking toward $19–$20/hr by 2027 given the market trajectory.

Primary sources

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