Home Cleaning Services Remain Resilient as Economy Slows

According to the third-quarter edition of the Home Service Economic Report, recently released by operations management software company Jobber, home services—including residential cleaning businesses—have remained resilient despite the slowing down of other industries.

The report featured data aggregated from more than 200,000 professionals who use the Jobber software platform, including residential cleaners, landscapers, HVAC technicians, electricians, and plumbers. It found that consumer spending on such services was second only to restaurants in the third quarter, outperforming other major categories such as automotive, grocery, and clothing.

While continued supply chain issues and a slight slowdown in demand contributed to declines in new work being scheduled in the third quarter of 2022, cleaning businesses (including industries such as residential cleaning and pressure washing) experienced positive revenue growth through the first three quarters of 2022. Although this year hasn’t produced the same higher growth rates as 2021, most of 2022 still had healthy median year-over-year revenue growth rates of 7% to 10%.

“Year-over-year growth in 2022 is relatively lower than in 2021, which was boosted by pandemic-related home improvement trends. Even with this slowdown, the category continues to grow at a very healthy rate of around 10%,” explained Abheek Dhawan, Jobber vice president of business operations. “What we’re seeing is the home service category normalizing after pandemic-related volatility. Home service remains a priority for consumers compared to other categories like clothing stores and automotive. Even with macroeconomic uncertainty, we see a positive outlook for home service.”

The report also found that, more and more, payments for services are being made digitally, with the ability to do so becoming an expectation for consumers. Digital payments represented 40% of the total payments collected in the third quarter of 2022, with cleaning businesses experiencing the highest adoption of digital payments.