Research
Lawn care cost by region, with every figure sourced
A labour floor built from BLS wages, run at three overhead values. Not a quote panel. Not a national average. HyreYard does not mow.
Written by HyreYard Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The finding
Limitations — above the fold
No national average lawn price is published here. A single number would mix wages, route density, season length, turf type and what the bid actually includes. That number is the least defensible figure on this site.
Two BLS vintages, two frames. Median hourly wages on this page are May 2025 OEWS via the Occupational Outlook Handbook. State annual means and the 943,430 establishment employment count are May 2024 OEWS. OOH’s 1,188,600 employment for 37-3011 is the 2025 projections base and includes a different treatment of self-employment. They are not a disagreement. They are different products.
A wage is not a bid. The worked example is arithmetic on a median and three assumed burden factors. It cannot see a slope, a gate, a dog, a HOA spec or a property that takes 12 minutes to walk into. The landscaping cost estimator on this site has you type the lumps. Leave the rate at 0 until you have a written number.
Store counts are not prices. 10,711 companies on file cover seven states. Texas is 2,999 of them, on a sales-tax permit, because Texas licenses no landscaper. They illustrate density in those seven states. They are not a quote panel.
What BLS actually measures
Source fact — May 2025, Occupational Outlook Handbook. Landscaping and groundskeeping workers, SOC 37-3011: median hourly wage $18.82. Grounds maintenance workers as a group: median $19.27 an hour ($40,080 a year); 10th percentile under $15.01, 90th over $28.10. All occupations: $24.51. Tree trimmers and pruners: $24.50. Pesticide handlers, sprayers and applicators, vegetation: $22.28.
Source fact — industry mix, same handbook. 48% of grounds maintenance workers are in services to buildings and dwellings (median $20.90 in that industry). 20% are self-employed — and OEWS establishment wages do not cover most of them. Recreation industries sit lower ($17.45); educational services sit higher ($21.39).
Source fact — May 2024 OEWS news release USDL-25-0451. Establishment employment for 37-3011: 943,430. Annual mean wage: $40,880. First-line supervisors (37-1012): 124,130 employed, annual mean $59,380. Mean is the average, pulled up by the right tail. Median is the middle. This page uses the median for the floor and the mean only where BLS published a mean and not a median in that table.
HyreYard analysis: a homeowner who googles “lawn care cost” wants a monthly number. The honest unit is still dollars per hour of named labour, times a burden the bid should be able to defend, times how long the stop actually takes. Region moves the wage. Season and density move the hours. Scope moves everything else.
May 2024 OEWS annual mean wage, SOC 37-3011 — highest and lowest states
| Area | Annual mean wage | Implied hourly mean (÷ 2,080) | What this is |
|---|---|---|---|
| MA | $49,130 | $23.62 | Highest-paying states in the featured table |
| DC | $49,130 | $23.62 | Highest-paying states in the featured table |
| WA | $48,260 | $23.20 | Highest-paying states in the featured table |
| AK | $46,230 | $22.23 | Highest-paying states in the featured table |
| CA | $46,120 | $22.17 | Highest-paying states in the featured table |
| United States | $40,880 | $19.65 | National mean, not a median, not a lawn price |
| SD | $33,900 | $16.30 | Lowest-paying states in the featured table |
| AR | $33,750 | $16.23 | Lowest-paying states in the featured table |
| LA | $33,470 | $16.09 | Lowest-paying states in the featured table |
| MS | $32,750 | $15.75 | Lowest-paying states in the featured table |
| WV | $32,310 | $15.53 | Lowest-paying states in the featured table |
BLS May 2024 OEWS, featured data tables and USDL-25-0451, retrieved 5 September 2026. HyreYard calculation: annual mean ÷ 2,080 scheduled hours. That divisor is an assumption (full-year, full-time). Seasonal crews do not work 2,080 hours; using it to compare states is still fairer than comparing annual means as if they were lawn prices.
Washington and California are in HyreYard’s seven-state roster and sit at the high end of this table. Texas, Florida and North Carolina are in the roster and are not in BLS’s highest/lowest list — we did not invent a mean for them from this featured table.
A labour floor, at three overhead values
HyreYard calculation, not a BLS statistic. Assumptions: 2 workers at the May 2025 37-3011 median of $18.82 per hour; 45 minutes (0.75 hours) on site; a 5,000-square-foot lawn as the scene, not as a measured job. Burden multipliers 1.3×, 1.6×, 2× stand in for payroll tax, workers’ compensation, vehicle, fuel, dump fees and the supervisor time the median wage does not include. They are not a measured overhead study. Running one “fully loaded” number would pretend we had one.
Straight labour before burden: 2 × 0.75 × $18.82 = $28.23.
Labour floor for one 45-minute, two-person stop at the May 2025 37-3011 median. HyreYard calculation. Not a quote. Not a monthly plan.
The May 2024 supervisor mean of $59,380 a year is about $28.55 an hour at 2,080 hours. That is a different occupation and a different vintage. It is why burden exists: someone is routing the crew.
What the three floors are, and are not
| Burden | Floor for the worked stop | What it can support | What it cannot |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.3× | $37 | Payroll tax and little else | A truck, workers’ comp, or a supervisor |
| 1.6× | $45 | A more typical loaded labour number in this arithmetic | Fuel spikes, a helper truck, or a second stop that runs long |
| 2.0× | $56 | Heavier insurance, more idle time, more supervision | Still not materials, dump fees, or a renovation |
HyreYard calculation from the assumptions above. A written bid that is below the 1.3× floor and silent on what was left out is incomplete, not cheap.
Region, density and the seven-state roster
Source fact — May 2024 state means. The same occupation paid a mean of $49,130 in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, $48,260 in Washington, $46,120 in California, and $32,310 in West Virginia. That spread is the regional wage story. It is not a regional lawn-price story until you also know season length and how many stops fit in a day.
Source fact — HyreYard store, seven states. TX 2,999 · AZ 2,284 · WA 1,730 · CA 1,600 · OR 1,140 · FL 552 · NC 406. Total 10,711. Texas is the largest slice on the weakest evidence (self-reported NAICS sales-tax permit — Texas licenses no landscaper). Arizona’s count rests on CR-21, which verifies hardscape and irrigation, not planting. Florida’s count sits where DBPR publishes no mandatory landscape licence. These counts are research effort and register publicness, not market share, and they are not a price.
HyreYard analysis: a high-wage state with a short mowing season (Washington) and a lower-wage state with a long one (Florida, if we had published a Florida mean — we have not, from this featured table) would not produce lawn prices in the same ratio as their wages. Hours per year and stops per day move the monthly number more than the hourly mean does. That is why this page will not print a monthly US average.
Quote-panel figures, and why they are not this page
HomeAdvisor, Angi and similar sites publish lawn-care ranges built from a proprietary flow of quotes and reported jobs. That is a legitimate product. It is not a BLS wage, and it is not a measured job cost for a named scope.
HyreYard analysis: where a quote-panel national range and this labour floor disagree, they are usually answering different questions. The panel is “what did people say they paid.” This page is “what the median worker costs before the truck.” Mixing them into one confident average would be the error the contract told us not to make. We did not retrieve a current Angi range for this page, so we do not print one.
What a comparable bid has to name
- Frequency and what “a visit” includes
Mow, edge, blow. Beds. Hedges. A spring renovation is not a mow.
- Who is on the crew, and whether anyone is spraying
Pesticide application is a different SOC (37-3012) and usually a different licence. See landscaping licensing by state.
- Access and dump
A gate, a slope, a HOA spec, clippings left vs bagged. These move time more than they move the wage.
- The rate you can audit
The estimator on this site is lumps you type. Leave it at 0 until a written number exists. HyreYard does not quote.
Method
- Wages
May 2025 OEWS medians from BLS OOH, retrieved 5 September 2026, page last modified 27 August 2026. May 2024 OEWS means and establishment employment from USDL-25-0451 (2 April 2025) and featured_data.htm (23 July 2025).
- The floor is arithmetic on stated assumptions
2 workers × 0.75 h × $18.82 × {1.3, 1.6, 2.0}. Change any input and the floor moves. That is the point.
- No quote panel
We did not retrieve Angi, HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack ranges. We will not type a remembered one.
- Store is seven states
TX, AZ, WA, CA, OR, FL, NC. Not a national market. Not a price.
Questions
How much does lawn care cost?
Why don’t you publish an average monthly price?
Is the BLS wage what I will pay per hour?
Does lawn care cost more in California or Washington?
How do I use the landscaping cost estimator with this page?
Does HyreYard mow lawns?
Written and audited by
HyreYard Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a landscaping company. We read the statute, the municipal code, the water-district rule or the federal soil file ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. This programme is new. The counts below are what we can already stand behind — a seven-state roster and a rule that we will not make a national claim from it.
- 10
- studies published
- 50
- states in the licensing and HOA tables
- 7
- states the contractor roster is titled to
- 0
- national claims drawn from our own store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. A rule comes from the statute, ordinance, board or agency that issued it, cited by section, with the URL and the retrieval date. We do not cite a blog that cites a code.
- Coverage is a number, not a vibe. A table titled to fifty states has fifty sourced rows. A table of cities is titled to the cities we actually read. Gaps are published as gaps.
- Store-based facts stay inside the seven states. Texas, Arizona, Washington, California, Oregon, Florida and North Carolina. Texas is the largest roster on the weakest evidence — a self-reported NAICS sales-tax permit — because Texas licenses no landscaper. National claims rest on federal or state agency data, never on our counts.
- Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation stay labelled. "According to…" is a source. "HyreYard analysed… and calculated…" is ours. "This suggests…" is interpretation. We do not present our reading as something the source stated.
- We do not landscape, irrigate, treat pests or pull permits, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favourable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of BLS OOH May 2025 wages retrieved 5 September 2026; May 2024 OEWS state means from the 2 April 2025 news release. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Grounds Maintenance Workers , May 2025 OEWS medians. 37-3011 median hourly $18.82. Page last modified 27 August 2026. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
- BLS — Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2024 (USDL-25-0451) , 37-3011 establishment employment 943,430, annual mean $40,880. Supervisors 37-1012 mean $59,380. Released 2 April 2025. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
- BLS — May 2024 OEWS featured data tables , Highest and lowest paying states for landscaping and groundskeeping workers. Last modified 23 July 2025. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Type the lumps. Do not trust a national average.
HyreYard does not mow and does not quote. The estimator will not invent a yard price. This page is the wage context for the number on the bid.
This page is general information about published wages and a labelled arithmetic floor. It is not a quote, not a market survey of jobs, and not a recommendation of any named company. HyreYard does not perform landscaping. Angi-style quote panels were not retrieved and are not printed.