FL · BLS OEWS May 2024 OEWS

Janitorial wages — Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 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

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach is Florida's largest metropolitan economy and a commercial cleaning market defined by the convergence of tropical hospitality, cruise-industry infrastructure, a majority Latin American workforce, Florida's right-to-work framework, and the state's landmark E-Verify mandate under Senate Bill 1718. The metro's cleaning industry serves one of the densest hotel corridors in the country, the busiest cruise terminal complex in the world, a large international airport ecosystem, and a growing financial and technology sector in the Brickell and Wynwood corridors. Wages are moderate by national standards but are under upward pressure from a housing cost crisis that has made Miami one of the least affordable cities in the United States relative to prevailing wages.

BLS Wage Benchmarks for the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale MSA

The BLS OEWS May 2023 data for Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach shows 38,840 janitors and building cleaners (SOC 37-2011) with a mean hourly wage of $15.18 and annual mean wages of $31,570. The Miami MSA mean sits approximately $2/hr below the national mean, reflecting Florida's absence of a local or state living-wage ordinance, right-to-work law, and the historically large supply of service workers from South Florida's substantial immigrant workforce. Estimated percentile spread: 10th percentile near $10.50/hr, 25th at $12.50/hr, median at approximately $13.50–$14.00/hr, 75th around $17.00/hr for experienced commercial cleaners, and 90th at $21–$23/hr for specialized cleaning in healthcare, hospitality management, and government-contract settings. Florida's statewide minimum wage reached $13.00/hr in September 2024, pulling up the lower end of the Miami cleaning wage distribution.

Florida SB 1718: E-Verify Mandate and Workforce Impact

Governor DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1718 in May 2023, with key E-Verify provisions taking full effect July 1, 2024. The law requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify system to confirm employment eligibility for all new hires, with penalties including fines of $1,000/day for persistent non-compliance and potential license revocation for employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers. For Miami's commercial cleaning industry—which has historically drawn heavily from Central American and Caribbean immigrant communities—SB 1718 created substantial workforce disruption. Reports from South Florida janitorial contractors in late 2023 and 2024 documented difficulty filling positions as workers concerned about documentation left the labor force or relocated, creating upward wage pressure as contractors compete for a smaller eligible workforce.

Cruise Terminal Cleaning: PortMiami and Port Everglades

PortMiami is the busiest cruise port in the world, processing over 7 million passenger embarkations annually across 12 terminals. Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale adds another 4+ million passengers per year. Cruise terminal cleaning occupies a specialized niche: turnaround cleaning between cruises must be completed in 2–4 hours for ships carrying 3,000–7,000 passengers, requiring hundreds of cleaners working under extreme time pressure. This work typically commands $16–$20/hr with premium rates for turnaround crews. The seasonal pattern follows cruise itinerary cycles: winter (December–April) is peak season when both terminals run maximum schedules. Workers in this segment typically cycle between cruise terminal work and hotel housekeeping to maintain year-round employment.

Latin American Workforce: Demographics and Dynamics

Miami's janitorial workforce is estimated to be 75–80% Hispanic or Latino—among the highest concentrations of any major metro—drawing from Cuban American, Colombian, Honduran, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan communities throughout Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Spanish is the operational language for most BSCs in the market; bilingual supervisory and safety training materials are produced in Spanish first; community networks drive recruitment more than job boards. The concentration of workers in immigrant communities, combined with immigration-enforcement pressure post-SB 1718, has created wage suppression dynamics: workers in uncertain documentation situations are less likely to report wage theft or push for higher pay, creating vulnerabilities that unscrupulous contractors have historically exploited.

Hospitality vs. Commercial Office: Miami's Wage Tiers

Hotel housekeepers in the Miami market typically earn $15–$20/hr depending on property tier: luxury properties (Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, the Biltmore) offer rates toward the top of this range with benefits; mid-scale extended-stay hotels and convention-adjacent properties cluster at $14–$16/hr. Commercial office cleaning in the Brickell financial district, Coral Gables business park, and Wynwood tech corridor wages typically run $13–$16/hr. Industrial and warehouse cleaning in Doral (the logistics hub near Miami International Airport) averages $12–$15/hr. The airport corridor itself includes both SCA-covered federal facility work at prevailing wage floors ($17–$20/hr for janitors under applicable wage determinations) and non-covered concession and retail cleaning at lower rates.

MIT Living Wage and Miami's Affordability Crisis

The MIT Living Wage Calculator for Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach estimates the living wage for a single adult at $25.86/hr—nearly twice Florida's $13/hr minimum wage and $10/hr above the BLS mean wage. Miami's rent crisis is severe: median two-bedroom rents in Miami-Dade exceeded $2,500/month in 2024, among the highest in the South. A full-time janitor earning the Miami mean wage of $15.18/hr grosses approximately $2,631/month—leaving essentially nothing after a median two-bedroom rent payment. Most cleaning workers in the Miami metro share housing, work multiple jobs, or rely on family income-pooling to make housing costs feasible.

Top Employers of Miami-Area Cleaning Workers

• ABM Industries — commercial office, aviation (MIA and FLL airport contracts), and healthcare facility services throughout South Florida.
• Aramark — healthcare and institutional food and facility services including Baptist Health and Jackson Health System accounts.
• Allied Universal — integrated security and cleaning services for commercial and resort properties.
• Sunshine Cleaning Systems — regional Florida BSC with deep South Florida commercial portfolio.
• SEA-PORT (cruise terminal specialists) — maritime services firm specializing in PortMiami and Port Everglades turnaround operations.

No Income Tax, Right-to-Work, and Florida's Labor Framework

Florida, like Texas, levies no personal state income tax, providing a modest take-home advantage for cleaning workers compared to income-tax states. However, Florida's right-to-work law prohibits compulsory union membership, and the South Florida commercial cleaning market has no equivalent of the SEIU 32BJ (Northeast) or SEIU USWW (California) organizing infrastructure that has pushed wages upward in other coastal markets. The Florida AFL-CIO and SEIU affiliates have organizing campaigns in South Florida—primarily in healthcare and building services—but union density in commercial cleaning remains below 5%. The structural implication is that Miami cleaning wages are set primarily by market competition and statutory floors, not collective bargaining, leaving the workforce more exposed to wage-cycle downturns than organized markets.

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.