Occupation / job
Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A median of $39,150 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers 22% behind — $10,870 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
952,640 people are employed as Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, which puts it among the largest occupations in the United States. At this scale you are never short of a vacancy and never scarce, and the second fact is why the first one is cheap.
Grounds work suits people who would rather be outdoors in bad weather than indoors under a light, and who can sustain physical effort over years rather than a season.
How long it takes to become one of the 952,640 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
$10,640 separates the bottom quarter at $36,190 from the top quarter at $46,830, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers pays less than moving out of it would.
A quarter of the field earns under $36,190 — $13,830 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if you cannot sustain physical work outdoors in bad weather for years rather than a season.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 952,640 figure counts people already working as Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $36,190 and $46,830 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $36,190 and $46,830. That is $10,640 of range, with $39,150 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $46,830, the 75th percentile, is worth $7,680 a year more than the $39,150 midpoint and $10,640 more than the $36,190 a quarter of Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers settle for.
From $39,150 the drop to $36,190 is $2,960 and the climb to $46,830 is $7,680. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $18.82 at the midpoint for Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, $17.39 at the 25th percentile and $22.51 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $39,150 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, the hourly figure is $39,150 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else