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Pest control workers

Also called Exterminator, Pest technician, Pest control technician, PCO, Pest management professional

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 102,620 US pest control workers, with median pay of $45,250 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 3,000 from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for pest control workers: Field-service software and mobile platforms, 2015 to 2023. Field-service software reduced the administrative overhead required per service call, allowing a single technician to complete more stops per day.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.5% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

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
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Pest control workers: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-2021

Chicago

Future History. "Pest control workers: 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/37-2021.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_37_2021, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Pest control workers: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-2021}}, 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.

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1850187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Exterminator / Vermin Destroyer / Rat Catcher (itinerant trade era)
Known then as Exterminator / Fumigator (early commercial pest control era)
Known then as Exterminator / Pest Control Operator (PCO) (NAEF-era industry professionalization)
Known then as Pest Control Operator / Pest Control Technician (EPA licensing era)
Known then as Pest Control Worker / Pest Management Professional (BLS SOC 37-2021)
Known today as Pest Control Worker / Pest Management Professional (BLS SOC 37-2021)
Projected to still be called Pest Control Worker / Pest Management Professional (BLS SOC 37-2021)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
103K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$45,250
Est.

≈ $44,090 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1901

Otto Orkin begins selling rat poison door-to-door in Walnutport, Pennsylvania at age 14. He is selling rodenticide products initially, not providing service visits, but the commercial model gradually shifts toward contracted service accounts. By the 1920s the company has expanded to multiple cities and established a headquarters in Atlanta. The Orkin company is the oldest surviving large pest control company in the United States and its founding marks the beginning of the national commercial pest control industry.

Beat · 1927

E.L. Bruce, owner of a Memphis hardwood flooring company, founds the Bruce-Terminix Research Laboratory to develop chemical protection for wood products against termites. In 1932, senior chemist Frank Lyons creates the first purpose-built termiticide. The Terminix brand eventually separates from the Bruce flooring business and grows into one of the two largest national pest control companies. The founding moment reflects the central driver of the 20th-century pest control industry: the wood-frame construction stock of the American South and coasts creates a structural termite problem that requires professional intervention.

Beat · 1933

On October 2, 1933, the National Association of Exterminators and Fumigators holds its founding convention in Washington, D.C., with 50 participants. The event, organized by William Buettner (who becomes the first president), marks the formal self-organization of the US pest control trade as a profession. In 1937 the association renames itself the National Pest Control Association to signal broader scope and a more scientific orientation. In 1998 it becomes the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), the name it retains today with nearly 5,000 member companies.

Beat · 1945

Three days before the formal end of World War II, the US War Production Board revokes its allocation order reserving DDT for military use. By October 1945 DDT is available for public sale as both an agricultural pesticide and a household insecticide. The transition is nearly instantaneous: chemical companies pivot wartime DDT production to consumer pest control markets. For the pest control industry, DDT and the chlorinated hydrocarbons that follow it (chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin) provide the most effective, long-lasting, and economical structural and residential pesticides yet available, fueling the first major expansion of the professional pest control workforce.

Beat · 1962

Rachel Carson publishes "Silent Spring" on September 27, 1962, documenting the environmental harm from widespread DDT use. The book triggers a national policy debate about pesticide regulation, public pressure on the pest control industry, and eventually the EPA's 1972 cancellation order for DDT. For pest control workers, the Carson moment marks the beginning of a decades-long regulatory ratchet: each new generation of chemistry is eventually restricted or banned as its environmental or health profile becomes clearer, forcing the profession to continuously adapt. The industry's response to "Silent Spring" sets the pattern for how it handles all subsequent regulatory pressure: resist immediate bans, participate in the regulatory comment process, and transition to new chemistry while the old chemistry is phased out.

Beat · 1972

The 1972 Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act amends FIFRA, giving the newly created EPA (established 1970) full authority over pesticide registration and applicator certification. For the first time, commercial pest control workers who apply restricted-use pesticides must pass a state certification exam and maintain a license with continuing-education requirements. The same year, EPA issues a cancellation order for DDT agricultural uses. State applicator licensing creates the first systematic framework for understanding how many professional pest control workers exist (via state license rosters), distinguishing the regulated commercial applicator from the informal operator.

Beat · 1988

EPA bans all remaining uses of chlordane, the dominant soil termiticide that had treated approximately 30 million American homes since the late 1940s. The ban follows years of findings that chlordane volatilizes from treated soil into indoor air at concentrations linked to cancer risk in occupants. The chlordane ban is the single most disruptive chemistry event in the structural pest control industry's history: the product that made a one-time soil treatment effective for decades was suddenly unavailable. The industry pivots to synthetic pyrethroids and, from 1995 onward, to baiting systems like Sentricon. The new termite management approaches require more frequent service visits and more technician judgment per account, which sustains employment even as individual treatment events become less intensive.

Beat · 1998

At the Pest Management '99 convention in Atlanta, the National Pest Control Association votes to rename itself the National Pest Management Association. The name change reflects the industry's deliberate reframing of the work: from "control" (reactive extermination) to "management" (ongoing, IPM-grounded, prevention-oriented service). The shift mirrors what had been happening in practice throughout the 1990s: the recurring service contract model replaced one-time extermination as the dominant commercial format for large firms, and "integrated pest management" became the professional standard of care.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace pest control workers? 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 published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+5.5%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 37-2021 (Pest control workers): 108.7 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 114.7 thousand in 2035, a change of +6.0 thousand (+5.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (5.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
22.9%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 37-2021.00 Pest Control Workers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.229, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.083 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.375; GPT-4-rated β 0.25. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for pest control workers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is taking this onRecord service reports, chemical usage, and technician notes in field-service software after each stop, with AI-assisted auto-population pulling service history and pre-filling recurring treatment details to reduce manual data entry.

Record service reports, chemical usage, and technician notes in field-service software after each stop, with AI-assisted auto-population pulling service history and pre-filling recurring treatment details to reduce manual data entry.[1],[6]

Where your edge is

Focus on the judgment calls software cannot pre-fill: unusual findings, customer concerns, site changes. Accurate exception documentation is what makes the automated record defensible in an audit.

AI is sitting alongside you hereDrive optimized daily routes generated by AI scheduling engines that sequence stops to minimize drive time, accounting for service-window commitments, traffic, and seasonal infestation hotspots.

Drive optimized daily routes generated by AI scheduling engines that sequence stops to minimize drive time, accounting for service-window commitments, traffic, and seasonal infestation hotspots.[7],[8],[9]

Where your edge is

Use freed drive time to improve site quality: longer inspections, better client communication, upsell of prevention plans. Routing AI raises output but the customer relationship remains human.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor IoT-connected smart traps and digital rodent-control units installed at commercial accounts, reviewing overnight activity dashboards to prioritize which stations need servicing before driving the route, reducing unnecessary stops.

Monitor IoT-connected smart traps and digital rodent-control units installed at commercial accounts, reviewing overnight activity dashboards to prioritize which stations need servicing before driving the route, reducing unnecessary stops.[10],[5]

Where your edge is

Learn to interpret sensor trend data and map activity patterns to structural vulnerabilities; technicians who understand what the data means add more value than those who only act on alerts.

Where pest control workers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Agricultural Technicians

IPM-focused pest control workers who develop expertise in pest biology, resistance management, and ecosystem-based monitoring can pivot into agricultural technician roles supporting farm IPM programs. Salary ceiling is higher and the work moves further from commodity spraying toward data-driven agronomic consulting, often supported by precision-agriculture sensor platforms.

What you'd add
  • · Entomology and plant-pathology fundamentals (community college or extension courses)
  • · Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) credential or state ag-pesticide license
  • · Precision agriculture monitoring platforms (e.g., Trapview, FarmSense)
  • · Scouting protocols and economic-threshold decision frameworks
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of pest control workers changed since 1840?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Arsenic, sulfur, cyanide gas, and mechanical traps (pre-DDT era)

    Early commercial exterminators in 19th-century America worked with a toolkit that had changed little since medieval Europe: arsenic-based rodenticides (white arsenic, arsenic trioxide), sulfur fumigation, hydrogen cyanide gas (hydrocyanic acid) for enclosed-space fumigation, and various mechanical traps. The trade required a tolerance for toxic exposure and physical risk; cyanide fumigation of ships and warehouses was genuinely dangerous work. There were no protective standards, no licensing frameworks, and no safety regulations. The work depended entirely on the technician's empirical knowledge of pest behavior, chemical handling, and structural access. Fumigation with hydrogen cyanide was widespread in the 1920s and 1930s for grain storage, ship fumigation, and (controversially) structural pest control.

    Effect on the work

    The era produced a small but distinct occupational class: urban exterminators who were essentially sole proprietors or employees of small regional firms. Employment was limited by the scope of commercial pest problems and the lack of systematic residential services.

  • DDT and chlorinated hydrocarbons (post-WWII chemical revolution)

    DDT became available for civilian use on August 31, 1945, three days before the formal end of World War II, when the War Production Board revoked its military-use allocation. The transition from wartime to consumer pest control happened almost overnight: DDT and a new generation of chlorinated hydrocarbons (chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin) gave technicians a powerful, long-lasting, low-application-frequency chemistry that transformed the economics of structural pest control. A single soil treatment with chlordane could protect a foundation for years. The post-WWII suburban housing boom created enormous recurring demand: wood-frame homes in termite country required pre-construction and post-construction treatment. The Terminix and Orkin networks, along with hundreds of regional operators, expanded rapidly on the back of these durable chemistry products. The occupation grew from a small urban trade into a nationwide residential service industry.

    Effect on the work

    The DDT era roughly tripled the US pest control workforce between 1945 and 1972, as suburban housing construction created new annual inspection and treatment markets. Industry revenue and technician employment grew in step with the housing stock.

  • FIFRA licensing and synthetic pyrethroids (regulatory-compliance era)

    The 1972 rewrite of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act by EPA marked the transition from a largely unregulated trade to a credentialed profession. FIFRA required EPA to classify pesticides as general-use or restricted-use; restricted-use pesticides could only be applied by licensed commercial applicators who had passed a state-administered certification exam. The DDT ban in 1972 and the eventual chlordane ban in 1988 (after EPA confirmed chlordane in indoor air of treated homes at rates linked to cancer risk) forced repeated chemistry transitions. Synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates, and eventually insect-growth regulators entered the technician's toolkit. Each chemistry change required re-training and re-licensing. The 1988 chlordane ban was a particularly disruptive inflection: the most effective soil termiticide used in approximately 30 million American homes was gone overnight, and the new alternatives required more frequent application and greater structural attention. The net effect was a professionalizing of the occupation: the license requirement, continuing-education mandates, and paperwork burden progressively separated the compliant technician from the informal operator.

    Effect on the work

    Licensing requirements raised the barrier to entry and created a documented workforce: state applicator license rosters provided, for the first time, a rough census of active pest control technicians by state. Employment continued growing through this era as the housing stock expanded and environmental regulations created more compliance-work around treatment documentation.

  • Sentricon baiting system and IPM protocols (colony-elimination and monitoring-first era)

    DowAgrosciences introduced the Sentricon termite colony elimination system in 1995, the most significant structural pest control technology change since chlordane's ban. Rather than creating a chemical barrier in the soil, Sentricon placed bait stations around a structure's perimeter and used an insect-growth regulator (hexaflumuron, later noviflumuron) delivered via cellulose matrix to eliminate the entire termite colony. The system required the technician to monitor stations on a scheduled basis, interpret foraging activity, and make judgment calls about bait deployment. It shifted a significant portion of termite work from a single soil-drench event (which unskilled labor could execute if licensed) toward a recurring service relationship that rewarded the technician's knowledge of termite biology and site-specific conditions. Integrated pest management principles, which had entered agricultural extension work in the 1970s, became the dominant professional framework for structural pest control by the 1990s: inspect before treating, use the least-toxic effective method, document results. IPM aligned pest control work with the growing environmental regulation burden and gave the industry a defensible public-health narrative.

    Effect on the work

    The shift to monitoring-based and IPM-grounded service models increased the service visit frequency per account, which sustained employment as individual chemical treatment events became less intensive. Recurring service agreements became the dominant commercial model for large pest control companies.

  • Field-service software and mobile platforms (PestPac, FieldRoutes, ServiceTitan)

    Cloud-based field-service management platforms transformed back-office operations across the pest control industry in the 2010s. PestPac (WorkWave), FieldRoutes (acquired by ServiceTitan), and ServicePro integrated route scheduling, chemical-usage logging for EPA compliance, customer CRM, invoicing, and technician dispatching into a single mobile-accessible workflow. A technician's day shifted from paper service tickets and paper chemical-log sheets to a smartphone-based work order flow: check in on arrival, complete an inspection form with photos, select chemicals used and quantities, obtain digital customer signature, and submit. The immediate practical impact was reduced back-office overhead, automatic generation of compliance documentation, and real-time route visibility for dispatchers. These platforms also created the data infrastructure on which AI route optimization and predictive analytics would later be built.

    Effect on the work

    Field-service software reduced the administrative overhead required per service call, allowing a single technician to complete more stops per day. The effect on employment was modest in the 2015-2023 period: productivity gains were absorbed by market growth rather than headcount reduction.

  • IoT smart traps and AI route optimization (Anticimex SMART, WorkWave WAIve, Rentokil PestConnect)

    Two AI-driven capabilities entered mainstream pest control deployment from 2023 onward: networked IoT rodent monitoring (Anticimex SMART, Rentokil PestConnect) and overnight AI route optimization (WorkWave's WAIve, launched January 2026; FieldRoutes auto-scheduling). IoT smart traps monitor bait stations and rodent-activity sensors around the clock at commercial accounts, sending real-time alerts to technician mobile devices and building predictive models of pest-population levels. A technician who previously drove a fixed route checking every station now arrives knowing which stations are active and which are quiet. AI route engines (WorkWave WAIve rebuilds the next day's full stop sequence overnight, accounting for service-window commitments, drive time, and traffic) reduce unproductive windshield time. The combined effect is higher stops per route-day and more targeted service visits. The physical, licensed, on-site core of the work remains unchanged: applying restricted-use chemicals requires a licensed human applicator, and structural inspection requires physical presence. The AI layer augments productivity without eliminating the compliance-gated, judgment-dependent center of the technician's job.

    Effect on the work

    Early-stage productivity gains. Anticimex SMART deployments at commercial accounts reduce "check-only" visits substantially; FieldRoutes and WorkWave route AI claim reduction in drive time per route. Whether productivity gains result in employment headcount reduction or market expansion depends on the competitive dynamics of service-area pricing; so far the industry has been growing into the efficiency rather than contracting.

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Pest Control Workers employment and pay by year

On record since1840
Latest US employment102,620 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$45,250 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+5.5% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

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 73202)

    Employment, 2020
    4,060, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 73202 Pest controllers and fumigators, 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$53,600, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 73202 Pest controllers and fumigators, 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
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
19003,000n/aEst., Wikipedia Researched contextReport
193312,000n/aEst., NPMA Researched contextReport
195035,000$2,600Est., EPA Archive (employment) Researched contextEst., US Census Bureau (pay) Researched contextReport
197258,000n/aEst., Wikipedia Researched contextReport
198872,000n/aEst., Wikipedia Researched contextReport
200358,500$24,990BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200459,080$26,220BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200562,400$27,170BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200662,710$27,880BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200763,440$29,030BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200863,180$29,890BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200963,500$30,410BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201062,490$30,340BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201162,270$30,220BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201261,380$30,060BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201364,450$30,330BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201467,640$30,660BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201570,250$32,160BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201672,830$33,040BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201775,130$34,370BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201877,300$35,610BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201979,450$37,330BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202079,560$37,820BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202185,370$37,540BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202291,160$38,310BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202393,760$43,470BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202496,110$44,730BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025102,620$45,250BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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