Outsourcing janitorial services vs hiring in-house: what it really costs

Outsourcing janitorial services usually costs less than an in-house janitor once you count everything an employee costs beyond the hourly wage. The wage is the smallest surprise. Taxes, benefits, coverage for sick days, supplies, equipment, and your own management time are where the comparison turns.

This post builds the full cost of an in-house janitor line by line, shows what a contract price covers for the same scope, and names the costs most comparisons leave out. It ends with the cases where keeping cleaning in-house still makes sense.

What an in-house janitor costs beyond the wage

An in-house janitor costs the wage plus a stack of employer costs that rarely show up in the first estimate. Here is the stack, in the order it usually gets forgotten.

Wage. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes median and mean hourly pay for janitors and building cleaners (occupation 37-2011), nationally and for each metro area. Use your metro's figure, not the national one. Pay varies a lot by market.

Payroll taxes. The employer pays 7.65 percent of wages for Social Security and Medicare, plus federal and state unemployment tax.

Workers' compensation. Cleaning involves ladders, wet floors, lifting, and chemicals, so the rate for janitorial work is not trivial. Ask your carrier for the class rate.

Benefits and paid time off. Health coverage, retirement match, holidays, vacation, and sick leave. BLS also publishes employer costs for employee compensation, which shows benefits as a share of total pay.

Supplies. Paper, soap, liners, chemicals, microfiber, mop heads. These run every month.

Equipment. Vacuums, a floor machine or auto scrubber, carts, ladders, wet-floor signs, plus repair and replacement.

Hiring and turnover. Job posts, interviews, background checks, onboarding, and the weeks of uneven work while a new hire learns the building. Janitorial jobs have high turnover across the industry, so plan on doing this more than once.

Supervision. Someone checks the work, handles complaints, approves time cards, and orders supplies. That person's hours have a cost even if nobody bills them.

The coverage problem nobody prices

Coverage is the cost most in-house comparisons miss. One janitor working 40 hours a week is not 52 weeks of cleaning. Holidays, vacation, sick days, and a resignation with two weeks' notice take that person out of the building for weeks every year.

When that happens, one of three things follows. An office manager empties the trash. A temp agency sends someone who does not know the building. Or the restrooms slip until someone complains. Each has a cost, and none of them is on the original spreadsheet.

A cleaning contractor carries that problem for you. Absences are covered from the contractor's crew, at the contract price, without you finding a replacement. For a building with one or two in-house cleaners, this is usually the line that decides the comparison.

The same applies to periodic work. A single janitor rarely has the time, the equipment, or the training to strip and refinish vinyl tile or extract carpet. So the building either pays a second vendor or skips the work, and the floors wear through faster. Our floor stripping and waxing cost guide shows what that periodic work involves.

In-house vs outsourced cost, side by side

The fair comparison puts both options on one annual sheet for the same scope: the same areas, the same nights, the same periodic work.

Fill the in-house column with real numbers from payroll and purchasing. Fill the contract column with written quotes. Then compare totals, not hourly rates.

For typical contract price ranges by square foot, see our commercial cleaning cost guide. Those ranges help with a sanity check, but your quote has to come from your building's task list.

A worksheet you can copy

Use this list to build the in-house number. Each line is annual.

1. Hourly wage times paid hours (including paid holidays and vacation).
2. Employer payroll taxes: 7.65 percent of wages plus federal and state unemployment tax.
3. Workers' comp premium at the janitorial class rate.
4. Health and retirement benefits.
5. Cost of covering absences: temp agency hours or overtime.
6. Supplies: paper, soap, liners, chemicals, consumables.
7. Equipment purchase spread over its useful life, plus repairs.
8. Periodic floor and carpet work bought from an outside vendor.
9. Recruiting and onboarding cost times expected hires per year.
10. Manager hours per month on cleaning, times that manager's loaded hourly cost.

Line 10 is the one people leave blank. Even two hours a week from a facilities or office manager adds up over a year.

When in-house still makes sense

In-house cleaning makes sense when you need a person on site all day for work that goes beyond cleaning. Moving furniture, setting up conference rooms, receiving deliveries, changing light bulbs, and reporting maintenance issues are hard to buy by the task. A building with a facilities department, an HR team, and a supervisor already in place can absorb the management load.

Even then, many organizations split the work. The in-house person handles daytime requests. A contractor handles nightly janitorial services and periodic floor care, where crew size and equipment matter. If your building needs someone visible during the day mainly for cleaning, a contracted day porter gives you that coverage without adding headcount.

In-house also tends to fit very small spaces with simple needs, where a few hours a week of light cleaning is all the building takes. The math changes as soon as the scope grows to include restrooms for a full floor, hard floor care, or more than one address.

What changes when you have more than one building

Multiple sites push the comparison further toward outsourcing. Each in-house location needs its own hiring, coverage, supplies, and supervision, and quality drifts from site to site because nobody inspects them the same way.

A single contract across sites gives you one scope format, one invoice structure, and one account manager for every address. Our post on multi-site cleaning contracts covers how to structure one so each building still gets its own task list.

What to ask a contractor before you switch

If the worksheet points toward outsourcing, test the contractor on the things you would otherwise own:

• Who covers the building when a crew member is out, and how fast.
• How crews are screened and trained before they enter your building.
• Who inspects the work, how often, and how you see the results.
• Who your single point of contact is for complaints and urgent requests.
• What supplies and equipment are included in the price.
• Proof of insurance and bonding, with a certificate of insurance.

At National Cleaning Group, crews are background-checked and trained, supervisors inspect the work, and each client has a dedicated account manager. We are insured and bonded, and a certificate of insurance is available on request. If you are moving from an existing vendor rather than from in-house staff, our guide to switching commercial cleaning companies covers the transition.

Get a contract number to compare

Run the worksheet for your in-house option, then get a real quote for the same scope. We walk the building, count restrooms and floor types, and send a written proposal you can put next to your in-house total. Book a free facility assessment or call (202) 968-1190.