Maids and housekeeping cleaners
Also called Housekeeper, Room attendant, Hotel housekeeper, Housekeeping cleaner, Hotel room cleaner
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 860,670 US maids and housekeeping cleaners, with median pay of $35,510 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 1,500,000 from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for maids and housekeeping cleaners: Maidbot Rosie autonomous room vacuum, 2018 to 2020.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to change +0.6% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 5.9% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
- 0.69 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013
Since the 2013 prediction
In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.69. BLS counted 917,470 of these jobs in May 2013 and 860,670 in May 2025. The count moved sharply in one step, May 2020 to May 2021, when BLS changed how it estimates these counts, so no change is derived here.
Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). Maids and housekeeping cleaners: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-2012
Future History. "Maids and housekeeping cleaners: jobs and pay since 1900." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-2012.
@misc{futurehistory_37_2012, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Maids and housekeeping cleaners: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-2012}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }
The access date is today's date on your device.
≈ $34,600 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
In 1900, "domestic servant" was the largest single occupational category for women in the United States, with approximately 1.5 million women enumerated in domestic and personal service. The Census did not separate hotel chambermaids from private household servants; both were recorded under "service workers." The occupation was racially and ethnically concentrated: African American women in the South, Irish and Scandinavian immigrant women in the urban North. The work was live-in, unregulated, and excluded from the legal frameworks (minimum wage, overtime, safety standards) being built for industrial workers. The domestic servant was the person who made middle-class life mechanically possible while remaining legally invisible to the labor protections that labor organized to create.
The Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 explicitly excluded domestic workers from their coverage: a deliberate political compromise that Southern Democrats in Congress required in exchange for their votes. The effect was to deny Social Security retirement coverage, minimum wage protections, and overtime rules to a workforce that was overwhelmingly African American women. Domestic workers were not added to Social Security until 1950, and full Fair Labor Standards Act coverage did not extend to household workers until 1974. These exclusions shaped the wage floor for hotel housekeeping, an adjacent occupation that drew from the same labor pool, for four decades.
On August 1, 1952, Kemmons Wilson opens the first Holiday Inn in Memphis, Tennessee. Wilson had been appalled by the inconsistent quality of American roadside lodging during a family road trip to Washington, D.C., and his solution was industrial standardization: every room the same layout, same linen set, same cleaning procedure, same quality check. The room attendant's job was for the first time documented in a standard operating procedure with a task sequence, a quality checklist, and a quota. When Holiday Inn grew to 1,000 properties by 1968, that procedure had become the industry default, not just at Holiday Inn but at every chain that competed with it. The modern hotel housekeeping department, with its quota of 14-16 rooms per 8-hour shift, its linen par levels, and its supervisor inspection, is a direct product of Holiday Inn standardization.
Airbnb launches on August 11, 2008, from a San Francisco apartment. Within seven years it has more listings than the five largest hotel chains combined. Each listing requires cleaning between guests: an Airbnb-specific labor market that the BLS establishment survey does not capture. Third-party STR cleaning platforms emerge: Properly (2014), TurnoverBnB (2016), MyClean (2009 in New York). The cleaners on these platforms do identical work to hotel room attendants (strip beds, clean bathrooms, restock amenities, vacuum) as independent contractors, typically paid per-turnover rather than hourly. Airbnb's growth creates a parallel housekeeping labor market invisible to official statistics and ungoverned by hotel industry wage norms.
Maidbot begins commercial deployment of its "Rosie" autonomous floor-vacuuming robot in guest rooms at select Marriott and Hilton properties. Rosie is the first autonomous robot purpose-built for hotel guest-room floors: a narrower task than the commercial floor scrubbers operating in airports and big-box stores (those machines handle long corridors; Rosie navigates the furniture-filled geometry of a standard hotel room). The robot saves 4-5 minutes of vacuuming time per room. Room attendants redirect that time toward bathroom cleaning and bed-making. No documented property has reduced headcount as a direct result of Rosie deployment. The robot is real; the displacement is not yet operational at meaningful scale.
In April 2020, US hotel occupancy falls to approximately 24%: the lowest level since the Great Depression. The American Hotel & Lodging Association reports that roughly one quarter of hotel housekeeping positions are eliminated within weeks of COVID-19 shutdowns. The occupation experiences the worst single-year demand shock in its modern history. When hotels reopen, they do not restore housekeeping at pre-COVID ratios. Instead, Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG institutionalize "opt-in" daily room cleaning for multi-night stays: a policy that permanently reduces per-occupied-room labor demand by an estimated 20-30%. By 2024, occupancy recovers to approximately 63% nationally, but the labor intensity of that occupancy remains structurally below 2019 levels. The pandemic turns out to be more transformative for this occupation than any robot.
BLS National Employment Matrix projects +0.4% growth for Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners 2024-2034: essentially flat, the smallest projected change of any occupation profiled in the Future History dataset. At 1,356,800 workers, the occupation remains one of the 25 largest in the United States, with a workforce that is approximately 90% women and roughly 60% Hispanic or Latino and Black workers. The healthcare segment (hospitals, nursing facilities, assisted living) is the growth engine; the hotel segment faces structural compression from stayover policies and incremental robot adoption. The flat BLS projection conceals a divergence: different parts of the same occupation moving in opposite directions.
Will AI replace maids and housekeeping cleaners? What the research says
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.
What's changing day to day for maids and housekeeping cleaners
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is taking this onVacuum carpets, rugs, and upholstered furniture in guest rooms, corridors, and public areas
Vacuum carpets, rugs, and upholstered furniture in guest rooms, corridors, and public areas; in robot-equipped venues, monitor autonomous vacuum robots (e.g., Tailos Rosie) via the management dashboard, intervene for edge cases, and handle surfaces the robot cannot reach.[5],[3]
Learn the dashboard interface for the robot vacuum fleet your employer uses. Robots handle open-floor runs but need a human to move furniture, handle stairs, resolve jams, and clean alcoves. Position yourself as the person who keeps the fleet productive rather than the person the fleet replaces.
AI is sitting alongside you hereSweep, scrub, mop, and polish hard floors using both manual tools and autonomous floor-scrubbing machines
Sweep, scrub, mop, and polish hard floors using both manual tools and autonomous floor-scrubbing machines; in large-venue settings, deploy and monitor BrainOS-powered scrubbers, verify cleaning coverage via proof-of-work data reports, and perform manual detail work in areas the robot cannot access.[3],[4]
Get trained on the autonomous scrubber your facility uses. The highest-value skill is reading the proof-of-work coverage reports and spotting missed zones before a manager does. Workers who can audit robot performance are harder to replace than workers who just push a mop.
AI is sitting alongside you hereReceive and update daily cleaning assignments via CMMS or housekeeping management mobile apps
Receive and update daily cleaning assignments via CMMS or housekeeping management mobile apps; log completed rooms, report maintenance issues (broken fixtures, leaks, safety hazards) directly in the app for immediate work-order creation, and track supply inventory against rooms cleaned.[1],[10]
Comfort with mobile work-order apps is increasingly expected in mid-scale and upscale properties. Workers who log accurate data help supervisors allocate labor and reduce overstocking. Volunteering to train peers on app use is a concrete path to a floor-supervisor role.
Where maids and housekeeping cleaners go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- Facilities Managers
- US median pay
- $106,660 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +4.6%
- First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers
- US median pay
- $49,100 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +3.2%
What each move takes
Facilities Managers
Facilities Managers plan and oversee the full physical environment of buildings: cleaning, maintenance, HVAC, safety, and vendor contracts. The path from housekeeping to facilities management is long (several years) but well-documented in the industry: many facilities managers began as cleaners or maintenance workers and worked up through supervisory roles. The pivot is accelerating because facilities management now requires understanding of autonomous cleaning robots, IoT sensor networks, and CMMS data analytics, areas where experienced housekeeping professionals have hands-on knowledge that new degree holders lack.
- · Associate degree or certificate in Facilities Management or Building Operations (community college, 1-2 years)
- · IFMA Certified Facilities Manager (CFM) credential or FMP (Facilities Management Professional) credential as an intermediate milestone
- · CMMS administration: move from user to administrator level (configure assets, run reports, manage vendor work orders)
- · Budget and contract management fundamentals: learn to read a facilities budget and manage vendor contracts
- · Safety compliance: OSHA 30 General Industry certificate establishes the compliance foundation facilities managers need
How has the work of maids and housekeeping cleaners changed since 1700?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Broom, mop, chamber pot, and manual laundry (pre-industrial domestic service)
The housemaid of the 18th and early 19th century worked with tools unchanged from the medieval period: corn-straw brooms, wet mops of twisted rope, wooden buckets, bar soap, and the chamber pot, which required daily emptying and rinsing before indoor plumbing existed. In houses with multiple servants, the hierarchy was strict: the parlor maid cleaned the front rooms; the scullery maid scrubbed the kitchen; the chambermaid attended the bedrooms. In inns and taverns, a single woman often did all of it. The labor was timed by daylight and candles; the physical cost (back strain, skin damage from lye soap, respiratory exposure to coal dust from grates) was the housemaid's to bear entirely. There was no employer protection, no minimum wage, no property she could refuse to clean.
Commercial laundry steam technology (1893) + indoor plumbing democratization
The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago showcased commercial steam laundry machinery that could process hotel linens at industrial scale, replacing the backbreaking hand-laundry that had previously been the most physically destructive part of a chambermaid's week. Hotels that had operated their own laundry rooms using hand-laundry workers began contracting with commercial laundries, freeing room attendants from linen washing while concentrating their work on in-room cleaning. Simultaneously, the spread of municipal water systems and indoor plumbing through American cities in the 1880s-1910s eliminated the chamber-pot duty that had structured pre-plumbing housekeeping. Running water and flush toilets transformed bathroom cleaning from a waste-removal task into a surface-cleaning task.
Effect on the workCommercial laundry contracting reduced the total labor hours required per hotel room per day; indoor plumbing reorganized the task sequence. Neither reduced headcount: the growing number of hotel rooms absorbed the efficiency gains.
Electric vacuum cleaner (Hoover Model O, 1908) + Hoover home adoption 1930s
The Hoover Model O electric vacuum, commercialized in 1908, was adopted first by hotels and commercial establishments, then by private households. For hotel chambermaids, the electric vacuum transformed carpet maintenance: a task that had required beating rugs and manual sweeping became a powered pass down the room. Hoover sold a million machines by 1913; by the 1930s the vacuum was standard equipment in upper-market hotels. Private households that could afford domestic servants also adopted the vacuum through the 1920s-1940s. The vacuum did not reduce the number of maids needed: it changed what they did with their time, shifting more hours to bathroom cleaning, bed-making, and surface-wiping as floor-cleaning time dropped.
Holiday Inn standardization (1952): the room-attendant as industrial production role
When Kemmons Wilson opened the first Holiday Inn in Memphis on August 1, 1952, he was solving a quality-consistency problem by imposing industrial standards on an ad-hoc craft. Each room was the same layout. Each room got the same linen set, cleaned to the same standard, in approximately the same time. The cleaning procedure (strip the bed, remake it with fresh linens, clean the bathroom in sequence, vacuum the floor, restock the amenities) was documented and timed. A room attendant's daily quota was set by management: several rooms per shift at major chains. The Holiday Inn grew between 1957 and 1968. Its competitors (Ramada, Howard Johnson's, Quality Inn) adopted the same model. By 1980, the room attendant quota system was universal across US chain hotels, and American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) training manuals described the position in task-by-task procedural detail.
Effect on the workThe quota-based room-attendant model maximized throughput per worker and kept labor costs as a predictable fraction of occupancy revenue. It also concentrated ergonomic injury risk: musculoskeletal disorders from repeated bed-making and lifting are the leading occupational injury among hotel housekeeping workers.
Microfiber cleaning cloths + OSHA ergonomic guidelines + housekeeping cart modernization
Microfiber cleaning technology (polyester-polyamide woven fabric thinner than a human hair, able to remove bacteria from surfaces with water alone) entered US hotel housekeeping supply chains through the 1990s after commercial adoption in Europe. Major hotel chains began specifying microfiber cloths and flat mops in their standard operating procedures by the early 2000s. At the same time, OSHA's 1999 ergonomics program (later withdrawn in 2001 but continuing to influence industry practice) focused attention on the musculoskeletal injury rate in hotel housekeeping: among the highest of any occupation. Housekeeping carts were redesigned to reduce reaching and bending; long-handled tools replaced some tasks that had required stooping. None of this reduced headcount; ergonomic improvements translated into injury-rate reductions, not automation.
Airbnb (2008): short-term rental cleaning gig economy outside BLS measurement
When Airbnb launched on August 11, 2008, it was renting air mattresses in a San Francisco apartment. By 2015 it had more listings than the top five hotel chains combined. Each Airbnb listing required cleaning between guests, typically by a local cleaner hired through the platform's own marketplace or through third-party apps like TurnoverBnB (founded 2016), Properly (2014), and MyClean (2009). These cleaners did exactly the work described in BLS SOC 37-2012 (cleaning, sanitizing, and restocking residential spaces) but as independent contractors classified outside the employer-based BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not capture gig-platform cleaners systematically; the actual number of people doing hotel-equivalent housekeeping work in short-term rentals as of 2024 is not known with confidence but is estimated in the tens to hundreds of thousands.
Effect on the workAirbnb created a parallel housekeeping labor market invisible to BLS establishment surveys. It also created a competitive labor market for cleaning workers in cities with significant STR activity: some experienced hotel housekeepers shifted to STR cleaning for more flexible scheduling, even at lower hourly rates.
Maidbot Rosie autonomous room vacuum (2018): first robot purpose-built for hotel guest rooms
In 2018, Maidbot (a San Antonio, Texas startup founded in 2014) began commercial deployment of its "Rosie" autonomous floor-vacuuming robot in hotel guest rooms at select Marriott and Hilton properties. Rosie was the first autonomous robotic device designed specifically for hotel room floors rather than commercial hallways or warehouses. The robot navigated around furniture using proximity sensors, vacuumed under beds, and returned to a charging station when finished. Maidbot positioned the device as a tool that allowed room attendants to skip in-room vacuuming and spend that time on higher-value tasks (bathroom cleaning, bed-making). Even in properties where Rosie was deployed, it handled only flat-floor vacuuming. The four to five minutes the device saved per room was not translated into headcount reduction at any documented property; it was absorbed into room-attendant quotas staying flat rather than increasing.
Effect on the workNarrow deployment (limited Marriott and Hilton pilot properties as of 2020, not enterprise-wide rollout). No documented headcount reduction attributed to Rosie deployment at any major chain. The technology is real; the displacement is not yet operational at scale.
COVID hospitality crash + "stayover" opt-in cleaning policy (structural demand reduction)
In March 2020, COVID-19 shut down the US hotel industry with a speed and completeness that had no modern precedent. In April 2020, national hotel occupancy fell to approximately 24%: a level not seen since the Great Depression (STR Inc). The American Hotel & Lodging Association reported that roughly one quarter of all hotel housekeeping positions were eliminated within weeks. When hotels reopened and occupancy recovered, they did not restore housekeeping at pre-COVID ratios. Instead, major chains (Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, IHG) institutionalized "opt-in" or "on-request" daily room cleaning for stays of two nights or longer. Under this policy, a guest staying three nights in a standard Hilton property in 2024 receives a full daily cleaning only if they specifically request it; otherwise the room is cleaned on checkout. This single operational change permanently reduced per-occupied-room housekeeping labor demand compared to 2019 levels.
Effect on the workBLS projects employment growth 2024-2034: essentially flat. The stayover policy change is the primary structural headwind: the same room count, the same occupancy, but fewer cleaning events per occupied room per stay. Employment has recovered in absolute terms but not to the level that pre-COVID occupancy trajectories would have implied.
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Browse all rolesMaids and Housekeeping Cleaners employment and pay by year
In other countries
The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.
Canada (NOC 65310)
- Employment, 2020
- 251,930, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 65310 Light duty cleaners, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
- Median pay, 2020
- C$36,800, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 65310 Light duty cleaners, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 1,500,000 | n/a | Est., IPUMS USA Researched context | Report |
| 1940 | 1,800,000 | n/a | Est., Domestic worker Researched context | Report |
| 1960 | 1,300,000 | n/a | Est., Holiday Inn Researched context | Report |
| 1985 | 900,000 | $9,000 | Est., BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook Researched context | Report |
| 2000 | 1,400,000 | $16,000 | Est., BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook Researched context | Report |
| 2003 | 896,370 | $16,600 | BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic | Report |
| 2004 | 880,150 | $16,900 | BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic | Report |
| 2005 | 893,820 | $17,080 | BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic | Report |
| 2006 | 900,040 | $17,580 | BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic | Report |
| 2007 | 915,890 | $18,350 | BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic | Report |
| 2008 | 917,120 | $18,990 | BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic | Report |
| 2009 | 887,890 | $19,250 | BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 865,960 | $19,300 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 877,980 | $19,390 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 894,920 | $19,570 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 917,470 | $19,780 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | 929,540 | $20,120 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 926,240 | $20,740 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 924,640 | $21,820 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 922,660 | $22,860 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 924,290 | $23,770 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 926,960 | $24,850 | BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 795,590 | $26,220 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 723,430 | $28,780 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 771,390 | $29,960 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 836,230 | $33,450 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 854,910 | $34,660 | BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 860,670 | $35,510 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |