First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? Delaware, at $74,340. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and North Dakota wins — the money there behaves like $58,960. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers is Delaware at $74,340, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to North Dakota at $58,960 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$58,430
People doing it
130,760
Highest paid
$74,340
DE
Best off, really
$58,960
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$40,560
Highest tenth
$85,650
Lowest, really
$41,627
TX
States with data
51
National average
$60,960
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $41,627 and $58,960. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 130,760 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $58,430. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $58,430 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $41,627 to $58,960. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 130,760 workers, first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- 51 jurisdictions report first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $40,560 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,430 |
| Top tenth earn over | $85,650 |
| This salary | $58,430 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers
The national median for this job
$58,430around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $40,560 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,430 |
| Top tenth | $85,650 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $47,130 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Delaware · $74,340 |
| Spread | $27,210 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $47,630 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $49,015 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $62,280 | $52,222 | $58,960 |
| DE | $74,340 | $57,453 | $57,885 |
| SD | $60,680 | $50,936 | $57,820 |
| AK | $67,760 | $56,499 | $55,547 |
| VT | $66,810 | $53,532 | $55,396 |
| WA | $71,930 | $59,433 | $54,745 |
| IN | $62,040 | $50,228 | $54,487 |
| WI | $62,630 | $50,240 | $53,965 |
| KS | $61,270 | $48,280 | $53,665 |
| NM | $59,120 | $48,070 | $53,183 |
| MT | $59,460 | $47,918 | $53,098 |
| IA | $57,670 | $46,938 | $52,878 |
| SC | $60,100 | $48,801 | $52,375 |
| WY | $56,230 | $47,361 | $52,132 |
| NE | $57,820 | $46,711 | $51,685 |
| KY | $57,670 | $46,617 | $51,529 |
| NY | $70,760 | $55,386 | $51,461 |
| NH | $64,340 | $53,877 | $51,144 |
| ID | $58,200 | $46,712 | $51,094 |
| ME | $62,300 | $49,353 | $50,828 |
| WV | $55,910 | $45,410 | $50,584 |
| OR | $70,560 | $52,845 | $50,463 |
| NJ | $68,580 | $54,835 | $50,361 |
| MN | $62,280 | $49,510 | $50,307 |
| OH | $55,680 | $46,104 | $50,216 |
| MI | $58,840 | $47,208 | $50,123 |
| NV | $57,250 | $48,180 | $49,681 |
| NC | $56,930 | $46,160 | $49,034 |
| TN | $53,700 | $45,328 | $48,995 |
| DC | $68,300 | $53,886 | $48,632 |
| CO | $60,840 | $49,096 | $48,427 |
| CT | $62,740 | $49,891 | $48,116 |
| UT | $57,200 | $45,595 | $47,994 |
| RI | $59,940 | $48,514 | $47,839 |
| AR | $49,890 | $40,879 | $47,255 |
| AL | $52,710 | $42,269 | $46,981 |
| MA | $63,750 | $50,536 | $46,689 |
| PA | $55,450 | $45,032 | $46,186 |
| VA | $58,400 | $46,507 | $46,161 |
| AZ | $56,410 | $46,498 | $45,989 |
| OK | $49,700 | $40,378 | $45,735 |
| GA | $54,830 | $44,099 | $45,604 |
| CA | $63,270 | $51,028 | $45,326 |
| LA | $48,410 | $40,011 | $45,290 |
| HI | $62,570 | $49,143 | $45,248 |
| MS | $47,130 | $38,256 | $43,825 |
| MO | $48,710 | $39,966 | $43,554 |
| IL | $53,340 | $42,543 | $43,036 |
| MD | $54,730 | $43,920 | $42,245 |
| FL | $51,290 | $43,392 | $41,944 |
| TX | $47,630 | $40,451 | $41,627 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $58,430.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $59,433.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Texas, on $41,627.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $58,430, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $59,433, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Texas anchors the distribution at $41,627. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.