Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
What the pay figures show
- Where are landscaping and groundskeeping workers paid best? The District of Columbia, at $48,790. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Alaska is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Montana wins — the money there behaves like $41,270. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for landscaping and groundskeeping workers is the District of Columbia at $48,790, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Alaska; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Montana at $41,270 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$39,150
People doing it
952,640
Highest paid
$48,790
DC
Best off, really
$41,270
MT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$31,150
Highest tenth
$56,730
Lowest, really
$30,268
MS
States with data
51
National average
$42,290
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.24%
MT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $30,268 and $41,270. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 952,640 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $39,150. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $39,150, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for landscaping and groundskeeping workers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $30,268 to $41,270. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 952,640 workers, landscaping 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.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $31,150 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $39,150 |
| Top tenth earn over | $56,730 |
| This salary | $39,150 |
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 Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
The national median for this job
$39,150around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $31,150 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $39,150 |
| Top tenth | $56,730 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $31,630 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $48,790 |
| Spread | $17,160 |
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 | $36,740 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $37,808 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MT | $45,350 | $37,244 | $41,270 |
| AK | $47,690 | $40,499 | $39,816 |
| ND | $40,790 | $34,955 | $39,465 |
| VT | $46,230 | $38,033 | $39,358 |
| MN | $46,610 | $37,956 | $38,567 |
| ME | $45,970 | $37,334 | $38,450 |
| ID | $41,600 | $34,254 | $37,467 |
| CO | $45,760 | $37,643 | $37,130 |
| WA | $46,950 | $39,904 | $36,757 |
| IA | $38,920 | $32,585 | $36,709 |
| WI | $41,230 | $34,129 | $36,660 |
| RI | $44,730 | $36,863 | $36,350 |
| NH | $44,890 | $38,249 | $36,308 |
| WY | $38,310 | $32,962 | $36,283 |
| MA | $48,670 | $39,173 | $36,191 |
| NE | $39,140 | $32,552 | $36,018 |
| CT | $45,740 | $37,124 | $35,803 |
| DC | $48,790 | $39,621 | $35,758 |
| IL | $43,790 | $35,342 | $35,752 |
| OH | $38,220 | $32,555 | $35,458 |
| KS | $39,330 | $31,876 | $35,431 |
| MO | $38,520 | $32,258 | $35,154 |
| NM | $37,560 | $31,712 | $35,085 |
| UT | $40,740 | $33,102 | $34,843 |
| AR | $35,770 | $30,056 | $34,744 |
| SD | $35,370 | $30,600 | $34,735 |
| TN | $37,020 | $31,926 | $34,509 |
| NV | $38,820 | $33,372 | $34,411 |
| IN | $38,070 | $31,676 | $34,361 |
| HI | $45,920 | $37,004 | $34,071 |
| NY | $44,840 | $36,385 | $33,806 |
| OK | $35,770 | $29,812 | $33,768 |
| KY | $36,670 | $30,478 | $33,690 |
| NC | $37,910 | $31,637 | $33,606 |
| CA | $45,560 | $37,829 | $33,602 |
| PA | $39,500 | $32,706 | $33,544 |
| SC | $36,710 | $31,244 | $33,532 |
| LA | $34,870 | $29,538 | $33,435 |
| OR | $45,040 | $34,979 | $33,402 |
| MI | $38,120 | $31,440 | $33,382 |
| TX | $36,740 | $31,701 | $32,622 |
| AL | $35,630 | $29,297 | $32,563 |
| AZ | $38,910 | $32,874 | $32,515 |
| GA | $37,970 | $31,393 | $32,465 |
| NJ | $41,360 | $34,675 | $31,846 |
| VA | $38,410 | $31,594 | $31,360 |
| MD | $39,380 | $32,315 | $31,082 |
| FL | $37,100 | $31,990 | $30,922 |
| DE | $37,350 | $30,685 | $30,916 |
| WV | $32,240 | $27,287 | $30,396 |
| MS | $31,630 | $26,422 | $30,268 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of landscaping and groundskeeping workers 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 $39,150.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 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 Alaska, at $40,499.
- The price adjustment for landscaping and groundskeeping workers uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $30,268. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $39,150, 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 landscaping 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 $40,499, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms figures for landscaping and groundskeeping workers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.