House cleaners are paid three different ways, and the gap between them is bigger than the gap between states. An employed housekeeping cleaner earns an hourly wage. An independent contractor charges a rate and keeps what is left after costs. A marketplace pro is paid per job. This guide gives the verified government wage data by state, then does the arithmetic that turns an hourly wage into what you actually take home under each model.
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The national picture
The reference figures below come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, occupation code 37-2012, Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners. Data vintage: May 2023, the most recent fully published OEWS release. Every state figure in the table is from the same release, so the states are comparable with each other.
is the national median hourly wage for maids and housekeeping cleaners (BLS OEWS, May 2023, the most recent fully published OEWS release)
The national mean is $16.66 an hour. The spread matters more than the average: the 10th percentile earns about $11.79 an hour and the 90th percentile about $21.96. That range is the whole argument for choosing your model carefully, because the top of it is not reached by working faster in an hourly job.
House cleaner pay by state
Every figure below is BLS OEWS data for occupation 37-2012 at the state level, May 2023, the most recent fully published OEWS release release. These are employed-worker wages: they exclude self-employed cleaners and independent contractors, who are not surveyed by this program. Read them as the employment floor in each state, not as what a self-employed cleaner charges.
| State | Median hourly (BLS) | Mean hourly (BLS) | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $12.40 | $12.38 | No state minimum wage; the federal floor applies. |
| Arizona | $16.57 | $16.71 | Indexed state minimum wage well above the federal floor. |
| Colorado | $17.25 | $18.12 | Denver metro pulls the state average up. |
| Florida | $14.71 | $15.50 | Hospitality-heavy employment; a stepped state minimum wage is still rising. |
| Georgia | $13.39 | $13.73 | Atlanta metro rates run above the state median. |
| Illinois | $17.03 | $17.84 | Chicago's separate city ordinance lifts metro rates. |
| Indiana | $14.27 | $14.98 | Federal minimum wage state; rates set by labor scarcity, not the floor. |
| Maryland | $15.74 | $15.94 | Montgomery County runs its own higher wage schedule. |
| Massachusetts | $18.29 | $20.05 | Among the highest state medians in the country. |
| Michigan | $14.93 | $15.53 | Detroit and Grand Rapids anchor most employment. |
| Minnesota | $16.87 | $17.38 | Minneapolis and Saint Paul operate ordinances above the state floor. |
| Nevada | $21.31 | $19.44 | Casino and resort housekeeping dominates; unusually, the published median sits above the mean. |
| New Jersey | $17.12 | $17.57 | Dense metro employment across the NYC and Philadelphia commuter belts. |
| New York | $19.11 | $22.41 | The highest mean of any state we serve; NYC hotel and residential work drives it. |
| North Carolina | $14.16 | $14.65 | Charlotte and the Triangle sit above the state median. |
| Ohio | $13.73 | $14.40 | Indexed state minimum wage; large employed-cleaner workforce. |
| Oregon | $17.12 | $17.45 | Tiered minimum wage — Portland metro, standard, and non-urban. |
| Pennsylvania | $14.78 | $15.55 | Federal minimum wage state, but Philadelphia and Pittsburgh rates run well above it. |
| South Carolina | $13.78 | $13.79 | Coastal hospitality employment sets much of the market. |
| Tennessee | $14.02 | $14.36 | Nashville's growth has pulled metro rates above the state figure. |
| Texas | $13.69 | $13.83 | Federal minimum wage state; the largest employment base of any state we serve. |
| Virginia | $14.42 | $14.99 | Northern Virginia rates run materially above the statewide median. |
| Washington | $18.15 | $18.90 | One of the highest state minimum wages in the country underpins the floor. |
Employee, contractor or marketplace: the real arithmetic
An employed cleaner at $16 an hour and a contractor charging $35 an hour are not four times apart. Here is where the difference goes.
Employee
You are paid for hours worked. Your employer covers payroll taxes, workers' compensation, supplies, equipment and travel between jobs, and in many roles pays for drive time. What you see on the pay stub is close to what the work costs to produce, minus the employer's overhead and margin. You carry no risk and you also capture no upside from working faster.
Independent contractor
You charge a rate and you pay everything out of it: self-employment tax on top of income tax, your own liability insurance, supplies and chemicals, equipment and its replacement, unpaid travel between jobs, unpaid admin and quoting time, and every hour you are sick or between clients. A rough working rule is that unbilled time and costs take roughly a third to a half of a headline rate before tax. A $40 hourly rate with two billable hours out of every three worked, minus supplies and insurance, is not $40.
Marketplace pro
You are paid per job rather than per hour, so speed and route density are what raise your effective rate. The variables that decide whether it beats employment are the platform's cut, whether lead fees are charged, whether travel is compensated by job clustering, and whether the payout is visible before you accept. Hello Cleaners charges no lead fee and no subscription, shows the payout before you accept, and lets you set your own rates and service area — the Join as a Pro page lists the current posted bands by service.
What actually moves your pay
- Route density. Three jobs on one street beats five across a metro. Unpaid drive time is the largest hidden deduction in self-employed cleaning.
- Service mix. Move-out, post-construction and turnover work pay materially more per hour than standard recurring cleaning.
- Recurring clients. A booked recurring schedule removes the quoting and selling hours that no one pays you for.
- Insurance and background checks. They cost money and they unlock the accounts that pay above market — property managers will not use an uninsured cleaner.
- State minimum wage. It sets the floor rather than the rate. High-minimum states show higher medians in the table above, but so does their cost of living.
Turning a wage into a business
The step from being paid a wage to setting your own is mostly paperwork and pricing. Read how to start a cleaning business for the registration, insurance and startup cost detail, how to get cleaning contracts for the recurring commercial work that stabilizes income, and the professional equipment list for what to buy before the first paid job. Job and contract listings by market are on our cleaning jobs and contracts pages.
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