No-Employee Cleaning and Lawn Care Businesses: Most Take In Under $25,000 (2024 Census)

The middle cleaning or lawn care business with no employees grossed $10,000 to $24,999 in 2024

The U.S. Census Bureau's 2024 data on businesses with no employees shows 78.5% of cleaning businesses and 65.4% of lawn care businesses grossed under $25,000. The middle business in each grossed between $10,000 and $24,999, and only 7.5% of cleaning and 19.2% of lawn care businesses grossed $50,000 or more. The averages are $21,483 for cleaning and $37,227 for lawn care.

These are receipts before expenses, not profit. They include part-time and side businesses, and the file records no hours to tell them apart. After expenses, the IRS's 2023 data show sole proprietors in a wider group that holds cleaning and lawn care kept about $21 of every $100 of receipts.

Share of businesses in each bracket, 2024. Percentages are rounded and are our division of the Census counts. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2024, released September 29, 2026, table NS00NONEMP, businesses with no paid employees.

The nonemployer file has no pressure washing or junk removal line. The closest rows are other services to buildings and dwellings, which holds pressure washing, and waste management and remediation, which the Census does not split. Both are shown below.

Average gross in 2024: $21,483 for cleaning and $37,227 for lawn care

An average divides total receipts by the number of businesses, so the businesses that gross $100,000 or more pull it up. That is why the lawn care average, $37,227, sits well above the $10,000 to $24,999 bracket where its middle business falls.

Average is gross receipts per business, our own division of the Census totals. Building services is the group that holds pressure washing, and waste management is the closest group to junk removal.

Grossing $25,000 or more puts you in about the top 22% of cleaning businesses with no employees, the top 35% of lawn care, the top 36% of building services, and the top 49% of waste.

To picture $25,000: at an example price of $150 a clean (our house cleaning pricing guide covers what to charge), it is about 167 cleans a year, a little over 3 a week. At an example $56 a cut and 26 cuts a season, the figures in our lawn care guide, it is about 17 weekly customers. These prices are examples, not Census figures.

The 2022 and 2023 files give similar averages: cleaning $19,936 and $20,785, and lawn care $34,458 and $36,041. The Census does not recommend reading its years as a time series, so use these only as a cross-check.

The Census counts businesses with no payroll, part-timers included

The Census calls these nonemployer businesses. Its glossary defines one as a business with no paid employees, at least $1,000 in receipts for the year, and subject to federal income tax. No employees is not the same as one person: the Census FAQ says the group includes some partnerships and corporations. What that means:

• Most are sole proprietorships. In the 2024 file, 98% of the cleaning businesses are sole proprietorships, 96% of lawn care, 94% of building services, and 82% of waste.
• Receipts are gross, before expenses. The glossary says they include gross receipts, sales, commissions, and income from trades and businesses. Gas, supplies, insurance, and the truck are not subtracted.
• One tax return is one business. The glossary says the Census counts each distinct business income tax return as a firm, so an owner who files two is counted twice.
• The smallest and largest are trimmed. The methodology leaves out businesses under $1,000, which it says may be hobbies, and businesses above an industry cutoff, which it treats as employers.
• Hours and costs are not in the file. The file layout has no field for either. The FAQ says most of these owners run businesses that "may or may not be the owner's principal source of income," so part-time work sits inside every figure above.

The data come mostly from business tax returns filed with the IRS, not from a survey. The file is not a sample, so it has no sampling error. The Census says its main source of other error is employers counted as nonemployers by mistake, such as a business that leases all of its workers, and it also lists industry misclassification. Receipts also carry a small random noise to protect privacy, under 2% for the four trade totals used here. The 2024 data use the 2022 industry codes.

Each trade sits in a Census code that also holds other work

Census codes come from NAICS, the standard list of industries, so each row holds more than the job in its label. The nonemployer file has no six-digit rows for these trades, so it cannot split any row further.

A sole proprietor picks an industry on line B of a Schedule C tax form, with a six-digit code: 561720 janitorial services, 561730 landscaping services, 561790 other services to buildings & dwellings, or 562000 waste management & remediation services. The five-digit Census codes and these tax codes name the same industries, because each of the first three has only one six-digit code under it. Your own line B shows which row you are most likely in.

The Census NAICS index (a spreadsheet) lists maid services and window cleaning under 561720, lawn mowing under 561730, and pressure washing of buildings, decks, and fences under 561790.

The closest rows for pressure washing and junk removal also hold other work

Pressure washing shares its row with pool, gutter, and chimney work. Junk removal is the weak spot. NAICS has no code named junk removal. Its index puts local trash and rubbish hauling under 562111 and debris removal under 562119, and the Schedule C code list has a single waste code, 562000. The nonemployer file takes its industry codes mostly from tax forms and has about 450 of them, and for waste it publishes one line, 562. That row is the closest published number, and it also holds septic pumping and cleanup work.

Share of businesses in each bracket, 2024, from the same source and method as the table in the first section. Building services holds pressure washing, and waste management is the closest group to junk removal.

For firms with payroll, the 2022 Economic Census does list a product line for cleaning building exteriors (NAPCS 7008600000, which includes pressure or power washing). The Census estimates that 51% of its revenue was earned by establishments coded other services to buildings and dwellings, the building services row, and 42% by those coded janitorial services, the cleaning row. So even for firms with payroll, about half of this work sits outside the building services row.

After expenses in 2023, the IRS group that holds cleaning kept $21 of every $100, and the waste group $8

The Census numbers stop at gross receipts. For what was left, use the IRS's sole proprietor tables. Its Table 2 for tax year 2023 (a spreadsheet), released in April 2026, uses the same industry groups as the Schedule C code list.

Cleaning, landscaping, and other building services sit in administrative and support services, and waste work sits in waste management and remediation. In the 2024 Census file, cleaning, lawn care, and other building services are 61% of the sole proprietors with no employees in the first group. The rest is office work, business support, security, and similar jobs. Some sole proprietors in both groups pay employees, so treat the table as a guide.

Job costs are the IRS line cost of sales and operations. Depreciation is the tax deduction for what you paid for trucks and equipment, spread over years or taken in the year you buy, so it shows when a cost is deducted, not how fast a truck wears out.

Kept by the owner is profit after all expenses, averaged over the whole group, including businesses that lost money. It is before the owner's own income tax and self-employment tax. Everything else includes advertising, rent, utilities, office costs, business taxes, travel, and interest. Figures are rounded IRS estimates from a sample of returns.

Not every business made money. In 2023, IRS Table 1 shows 73 of every 100 sole proprietors in administrative and support services reported a profit and 27 did not. In waste management and remediation, 60 reported a profit and 40 did not.

The waste group keeps less. Depreciation, repairs, and insurance add up to $17 of every $100 there, against $9 in the group that holds cleaning, and job costs are $24 against $16. Our junk removal start-up guide covers the dump fee, the cost customers never see.

From $10,000 up, bigger businesses keep less of every $100 but more dollars (IRS, 2022)

A pooled share like the $21 is weighted by dollars, so the largest businesses count most. The IRS also splits sole proprietors by receipts. Its latest published split, for tax year 2022, is in the Spring 2025 Statistics of Income Bulletin. It uses the sector called administrative and support and waste management services, which holds all four Census rows above.

Source: IRS, Statistics of Income Bulletin, Spring 2025, Table 3, tax year 2022. Dollar averages are rounded to the nearest $10. Kept is net profit before the owner's income tax and self-employment tax.

In 2022, the 3% of sole proprietors in this sector who grossed $200,000 or more took in 46% of the receipts and kept $16 of every $100. Businesses grossing under $5,000 lost money on average.

From $10,000 up, the share kept drops as receipts grow, and helper pay and job costs take a bigger share of receipts. Pay to employees and subcontractors went from 2% of receipts at $25,000 to $49,999 to 14% at $100,000 to $199,999, and job costs from 3% to 13%.

When you do the jobs yourself, your own pay is the profit, so the share you keep looks high. The Schedule C wages line leaves out "amounts paid to yourself," so your pay stays in the profit.

These are averages for a sector that mixes trades and sizes, from 2022, an older year than the other tables. Use them as a rough guide only.

Firms with fewer than 5 employees averaged $185,432 (cleaning) and $299,970 (lawn care) in 2022

The Census tables above count businesses with no payroll. The Census runs a second series, Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), for employer firms, and its 2022 data files split them by size. Firms with fewer than 5 employees are the smallest employer group. Some had no one on the payroll in mid-March and paid employees later in the year.

2022 data, 2017 NAICS codes. Firms with fewer than 5 employees: 39,774 janitorial, 82,695 landscaping, 12,845 other building services, and 3,340 solid waste collection. Employees per firm is mid-March employment divided by firms, and receipts per firm is total receipts divided by firms, both divisions we did ourselves.

SUSB does not count the owner of an unincorporated business as an employee. It leaves out businesses without employees, so this table and the 2024 tables above describe different groups, in different years, and the Census says employer and nonemployer receipts may differ in what they include.

Payroll was about $25 of every $100 of receipts for janitorial firms and $24 for landscaping firms of this size. The file has no profit figure. Solid waste collection is the NAICS code for garbage hauling and transfer stations, so it is not a measure of junk removal.

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How this post was made: drafted with AI from the sources linked on this page. Figures and links were checked on October 22, 2026.