TX · BLS OEWS May 2024 OEWS

Janitorial wages — Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX metropolitan area

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024 OEWS  |  SOC codes: 37-2011 (Janitors) and 37-1011 (Supervisors)  |  Last reviewed: June 2, 2026

Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land is the largest janitorial employment market in Texas and one of the largest non-union commercial cleaning markets in the United States. With approximately 45,340 janitors and building cleaners employed across the metro—second only to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago in absolute numbers—Houston's cleaning workforce is shaped by the city's enormous energy and petrochemical industry, its large and primarily Latino workforce, the structural absence of any statewide income tax, and one of the weakest wage enforcement environments in the country. Understanding Houston means understanding how Texas's employer-oriented legal landscape creates a market where wage rates are driven almost entirely by competitive labor demand rather than legislative or union floors.

BLS Wage Data: Houston's Competitive Market

The BLS OEWS May 2023 data for Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land shows a mean hourly wage of $14.69 and an annual mean of $30,550 for SOC 37-2011. The median is estimated at approximately $13.50–$14.00/hr, modestly above the Texas state minimum wage of $7.25/hr. Percentile estimates place the 10th percentile at approximately $10.00–$11.00/hr (reflecting informal and day-labor cleaning work), the 25th at $12.00/hr, the 75th at approximately $17.00/hr for commercial office cleaning with tenure, and the 90th near $21.00/hr for specialized petrochemical facility and hazmat-adjacent cleaning roles. Houston ranks among the ten lowest-wage major metros for janitorial wages, a function of Texas's right-to-work status, absence of union organization in commercial cleaning, and limited state enforcement capacity.

No State Income Tax: The Houston Take-Home Advantage

Texas levies no personal state income tax, meaningfully improving take-home pay for working-class Houstonians compared to states with income tax. A Houston janitor earning $14.69/hr takes home approximately $1,900–$2,000/month after federal taxes—roughly $100–$150/month more than a worker at the same gross wage in California, New York, or Massachusetts after state income tax. While this advantage is modest relative to large wage gaps between Texas and unionized markets, it is a genuine selling point for recruiting workers from higher-tax states. The no-state-income-tax advantage compresses somewhat at higher income levels, but for cleaning workers earning $30,000–$45,000 annually, the effective take-home boost is meaningful.

Energy and Petrochemical Facility Cleaning: Houston's Specialty

No American city generates the volume or complexity of petrochemical facility cleaning demand that Houston does. The Houston Ship Channel—home to the largest petrochemical complex in the Western Hemisphere—houses ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, LyondellBasell, and Shell, whose facilities require specialized industrial cleaning: tank cleaning, chemical hazmat decontamination, heat exchanger cleaning, and controlled-environment maintenance. Workers performing this cleaning typically hold OSHA 10 or OSHA 40 hazmat certification and earn $18–$28/hr—significantly above standard commercial office rates. Companies like Clean Harbors and Stericycle Environmental Solutions operate industrial cleaning contracts throughout the Ship Channel corridor. The Energy Corridor in western Houston (home to BP America, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and others) generates a secondary tier of high-end commercial office cleaning demand from Fortune 500 energy firms maintaining LEED-certified headquarters spaces.

ABM Industries and Latino Workforce Dynamics

ABM Industries, with a major operational center in Texas, is one of Houston's largest BSC employers, providing janitorial, engineering, and facility services to commercial office buildings, healthcare facilities, and aviation contracts at George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Hobby Airport. ABM's Houston operations reflect the city's broader workforce demographics: the Houston metro's janitorial workforce is estimated to be 60–70% Hispanic or Latino, reflecting both the large regional Latino population and the industry's historical recruitment channels. Spanish-language job postings, bilingual supervisory staff, and community-based hiring through church and neighborhood networks are standard operating practice. Aramark (healthcare and education), Allied Universal, and regional contractors like Westway Services and Hines' in-house facilities teams round out the major employer roster.

Texas Workers' Compensation: Voluntary System

Texas is the only U.S. state where workers' compensation insurance is optional for private employers. Employers who do not subscribe to the workers' compensation system are called "non-subscribers" and lose certain common-law defenses in personal injury suits by injured workers. For janitorial contractors, this creates two market tiers: subscribers (typically mid-to-large BSCs carrying workers' comp through Texas Mutual Insurance Company or private carriers, paying premium rates of $4–$9 per $100 of payroll) and non-subscribers (smaller contractors who self-insure the risk). Worker advocates note that non-subscriber status disproportionately affects small cleaning companies employing low-wage workers. Bid qualifications for commercial building contracts in Houston's Class A market routinely require WC certification, effectively forcing major contractors into the insured tier.

Houston's Wage Theft Landscape

Houston enacted a Wage Theft Ordinance in 2013 covering city contractors, but a 2025 investigation by Houston Landing found the ordinance had recovered only $5,300 in the 12 years of operation. The ordinance lacks enforcement authority beyond referral to the Texas Workforce Commission, which itself has over $78 million in ordered wages never collected as of 2024. The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division has conducted 65 enforcement actions in Houston since April 2020, recovering $4.9 million for 1,499 workers. A Rutgers Workplace Justice Lab analysis found that janitors and building cleaners ranked among the top 10 most wage-theft-victimized occupations in the state, with violations concentrated in subcontracting chains.

MIT Living Wage and Houston's Affordability Picture

The MIT Living Wage Calculator for Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands estimates the living wage for a single adult at $22.19/hr—nearly $8/hr above the BLS mean wage. Houston's housing market is considerably more affordable than coastal peers: median two-bedroom apartment rents run approximately $1,200–$1,500/month in the Houston metro, compared to $2,000–$3,000+ in comparable coastal markets. This cost-of-living advantage partially compensates for the low wage floor. However, the housing affordability advantage has eroded significantly since 2020, with Houston apartment rents rising faster than wages as the metro absorbed domestic migration from higher-cost states.

Right-to-Work and Evolving Industry Demand

Texas is a right-to-work state, and commercial cleaning in the Houston metro is almost entirely non-union—there is no equivalent to SEIU Local 1 (Chicago) or SEIU 32BJ (New York) organizing this market. Wages are set almost entirely by market competition among contractors and the labor availability of Houston's large service workforce. The expansion of energy transition infrastructure—battery storage manufacturing, data centers for the energy sector's digital transformation, LNG terminal construction—is generating new forms of specialized facility cleaning demand, as is Houston's growing Texas Medical Center (the world's largest medical complex), which employs thousands of environmental services workers with wages typically in the $14–$17/hr range under individual hospital contracts.

Primary sources

Data vintage: BLS OEWS May 2024 OEWS. Page last reviewed: June 2, 2026. Primary source: BLS OEWS Metropolitan Area Data. Spot an error? Contact us.