Occupation / job
Laundry and Dry-Cleaning 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
Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers pays $34,890 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $15,130 a year short, or $7.27 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
With 198,040 in the occupation, Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
These roles suit people with real speed and hand accuracy who want piece work they can see the result of, in a domestic industry much smaller than it once was.
No verified preparation time is on file for Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
$7,200 separates the bottom quarter at $30,360 from the top quarter at $37,560, a ratio of 1.2x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers pays less than moving out of it would.
The bottom quarter is under $30,360, $19,660 short of the $50,020 typical American job. The question worth answering before entering Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers is how long people spend in that quarter, because the median says nothing about it.
Avoid it if you need a field with domestic depth; much of this production has moved offshore and stayed there.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 198,040 people employed as Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A 1.2x ratio from $30,360 to $37,560 makes $34,890 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $30,360 at the 25th percentile, $34,890 at the midpoint, $37,560 at the 75th. $7,200 separates the quarter of Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $30,360 and $37,560 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $34,890. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $2,670; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $7,200.
Getting from $30,360 to the $34,890 midpoint is $4,530; getting from there to $37,560 is only $2,670. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers is $16.77 an hour. The quarters sit at $14.59 and $18.05, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers. The self-employed are excluded, so $34,890 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers, the hourly figure is $34,890 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