Landscapers and groundskeepers
Official title Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers (SOC 37-3011)
Also called Landscaper, Groundskeeper, Grounds maintenance worker, Lawn care technician, Greenskeeper
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 952,640 US landscapers and groundskeepers, with median pay of $39,150 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2020, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 4,000 from 1859, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for landscapers and groundskeepers: GPS fleet management, estimating software, and smart irrigation controllers, 1990 to 2015.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to grow 4.7% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 2.4% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
- 0.95 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
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). Landscapers and groundskeepers: jobs and pay since 1859 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-3011
Future History. "Landscapers and groundskeepers: jobs and pay since 1859." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-3011.
@misc{futurehistory_37_3011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Landscapers and groundskeepers: jobs and pay since 1859}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/37-3011}}, 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.
≈ $38,146 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
Frederick Law Olmsted is appointed superintendent of Central Park in 1858 and begins executing the Greensward Plan with co-designer Calvert Vaux. The park's head gardener, Ignaz Pilat, oversees the horticultural work. At peak in 1859, an estimated 4,000 laborers are employed on the site -- grading, blasting rock, planting trees, and cultivating grass from swamp and rubble. Central Park establishes the occupational template for the modern grounds maintenance worker: an outdoor laborer who cares for a designed landscape rather than farming it.
Amariah Hills of Hockanum, Connecticut receives the first American patent for a reel-type lawn mower on January 28, 1868. Two years later, Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana designs a lightweight push version that becomes a commercial success. By 1885 the US is producing 50,000 reel mowers annually for domestic use and export. The mower makes the suburban lawn a practical possibility for middle-class homeowners -- and creates the commercial premise for residential lawn maintenance as a paid service.
The Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) is founded in 1961, marking the first national trade association specifically for the landscape contracting profession. The founding recognizes that landscaping has become a distinct commercial industry, no longer simply an extension of gardening or agriculture. ALCA would eventually merge in 2005 with the Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA, founded 1979) to form PLANET, which in 2015 became the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP).
ChemLawn is founded in Troy, Ohio by Paul and Richard Duke. Their model -- uniformed technicians in company trucks making scheduled visits to apply fertilizer and weed control -- converts lawn care from a DIY activity into a subscription service. By the mid-1970s, chemical lawn care is a nationally recognized consumer category. ChemLawn is sold to Ecolab in 1987 for $376 million, and then to ServiceMaster in 1992 for $103 million, eventually becoming TruGreen. The ChemLawn model creates the route-based commercial grounds maintenance workforce that defines the industry's labor structure for the following five decades.
Starting in the 1980s, Latino immigrants become the dominant workforce in US commercial landscaping. By the early 2000s, Hispanic workers account for a majority of the grounds maintenance labor force -- and 45% of landscaping fatalities, reflecting the physical hazards of the work (equipment injuries, heat illness, roadside work zone exposures). The H-2B visa program becomes a structural feature of the industry's labor supply, with landscaping services eventually receiving 31.3% of all seasonal-worker H-2B allocations -- the largest single industry share of any category.
Husqvarna introduces the Solar Mower, the world's first robotic lawn mower, in 1995. It is a residential product with limited commercial application. The company sells its millionth robotic mower by 2021, demonstrating that autonomous mowing has real consumer market penetration. The commercial robotic mowing frontier -- large flat turf managed by wire-free GPS robots -- arrives in earnest with the CEORA platform in December 2020. The arc from 1995 to 2026 illustrates how long the gap is between a technology's residential and commercial viability.
By 2015, between 1982 and 1997, lawn development consumed approximately 382,850 acres annually as suburban sprawl intensified -- nearly all of it requiring maintenance. The lawn care business had reached an estimated $40 billion in annual revenue by the early 2000s, growing to $99 billion by 2019 and $188.8 billion by 2025. This sustained revenue growth, driven by commercial property expansion, HOA-managed communities, and municipal green-space investment, is the structural reason employment in the occupation has continued to grow despite increasing mechanization of individual tasks.
Husqvarna launches the CEORA commercial robotic mower platform in December 2020, targeting parks, schools, corporate campuses, and municipal properties with large open turf areas. CEORA uses RTK satellite navigation with no boundary wire -- a significant operational simplification over earlier perimeter-wire models. The timing coincides with severe labor shortages in commercial landscaping during COVID-19: many landscape contractors report losing 20-30% of their workforce. This labor crisis accelerates interest in robotic equipment among commercial operators who previously had no economic incentive to invest at scale.
Will AI replace landscapers and groundskeepers? 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 landscapers and groundskeepers
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is sitting alongside you hereMow, edge, and maintain turf on commercial, municipal, and residential properties using ride-on and push mowers
Mow, edge, and maintain turf on commercial, municipal, and residential properties using ride-on and push mowers; on large flat sites, deploy and monitor autonomous robotic mowers (e.g. Husqvarna Automower EPOS), setting boundary zones, reviewing fleet telemetry, and intervening when robots encounter obstacles or terrain the system cannot resolve.[3],[9],[2]
Learn to operate robotic mower fleet management software (Husqvarna Fleet Services or equivalent). Workers who can deploy, diagnose, and maintain autonomous mowing units are promoted to site technician roles; those who only operate walk-behind mowers face shrinking roles on large commercial contracts.
AI is sitting alongside you hereSupport landscape proposals and estimates: help measure and photograph site conditions
Support landscape proposals and estimates: help measure and photograph site conditions; use property measurement tools (e.g. Aspire PropertyIntel) to generate aerial takeoffs; assist with plant selection and layout sketches in design software (DynaSCAPE, iScape) for client presentations.[6],[13]
Learn Aspire or Jobber estimating workflows. AI-generated property takeoffs compress proposal time from hours to minutes, but someone still needs to finalize plant specs, adjust for site conditions, and present to the client. Workers who own the proposal step earn more and work in less physically demanding conditions.
AI is sitting alongside you hereTrack and report job completion, equipment condition, and supply usage via mobile field apps (e.g
Track and report job completion, equipment condition, and supply usage via mobile field apps (e.g. Jobber); receive AI-optimized daily route and schedule; log time and materials for invoicing; flag unexpected site conditions (pest damage, irrigation breaks, hazardous trees) for supervisor follow-up.[5],[14]
Become the crew member who owns the field app. Workers comfortable with Jobber or Aspire mobile (logging time accurately, submitting photo documentation, and using the AI-generated quote features) transition more easily to crew lead and operations coordinator roles.
Where landscapers and groundskeepers go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers
- US median pay
- $58,430 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +4%
- Tree Trimmers and Pruners
- US median pay
- $50,960 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +4.2%
What each move takes
First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers
Most landscaping supervisors are promoted from crew worker roles; direct field experience is the primary qualification. The shift is driven by demonstrated reliability, equipment expertise, and willingness to manage crew scheduling and customer communication. Workers who adopt field service software (Jobber, Aspire) and robotic equipment operation stand out as supervisor candidates because they are already doing the technology management that supervisors now handle. Median wages for supervisors are roughly 50% higher than for workers.
- · Crew scheduling and performance management using Jobber or Aspire
- · Safety training and OSHA 10 certification for grounds and equipment operations
- · Customer communication: upselling additional services, handling complaints, and producing site inspection reports
- · Pesticide applicator license (if not already held) to supervise licensed applications
How has the work of landscapers and groundskeepers changed since 1858?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Hand tools and horse-drawn equipment (pre-mechanical mower era)
The groundskeeper of the 1850s worked entirely with hand tools: scythes, sickles, rakes, spades, and wheelbarrows. Large estates and parks maintained their turf using teams of workers swinging scythes -- the same technique that had maintained English manor gardens for centuries. Horse-drawn equipment was used for heavier soil-moving work. The limiting factor was labor: a single worker could scythe and rake perhaps a quarter-acre of turf per day in good conditions. For Olmsted's Central Park crew of 4,000 workers in 1859, the manual intensity of the work was part of its identity -- there was no mechanical shortcut to shaping terrain, planting thousands of trees, or cultivating grass from bare rock and swamp.
Reel push mower and early mechanical equipment (Hills patent era)
On January 28, 1868, Amariah Hills of Hockanum, Connecticut received the first American patent for a reel-type lawn mower, building on the English cylinder mower invented by Edwin Budding in 1830. In 1870, Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana designed a lightweight human-pushed reel mower that became a commercial success; by 1885 the United States was producing 50,000 lawn mowers annually. The reel mower did not transform professional groundskeeping overnight -- estate and park workers still used large numbers of manual laborers -- but it made the suburban lawn a practical aspiration for middle-class homeowners rather than an exclusively wealthy preoccupation. The mower that still required pushing was the founding tool of the residential lawn; it also seeded a commercial premise: someone had to do this work.
Effect on the workThe reel mower democratized lawn ownership but increased total labor demand by expanding the population of lawns that needed maintenance. It did not reduce the number of grounds workers; it created the market for them.
Rotary power mower (postwar suburbanization era)
The rotary power mower transformed professional grounds maintenance after World War II. Propelled by gasoline engines developed during the war, rotary mowers could cut at higher speeds and handle taller, wetter grass than reel designs -- making them practical for the quarter-acre residential lots that characterize postwar suburban developments. Power mower sales in the US climbed from 139,000 units in 1946 to 4.2 million by 1959. For professional groundskeepers, the power mower increased productivity per worker on large properties: a single worker with a riding mower could now manage acreage that previously required a crew. The same period saw the founding of the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) in 1961, marking the point at which the profession had sufficient commercial scale to warrant a national trade association.
Effect on the workThe rotary power mower dramatically increased the productivity of individual grounds workers on large properties, enabling the commercial landscaping industry to grow without proportional headcount increases. The residential market grew fast enough to absorb the productivity gains -- total employment expanded rather than contracted through the 1950s-60s.
Leaf blower, commercial irrigation, and chemical lawn programs (ChemLawn era)
The leaf blower first appeared in the 1970s as a farm crop-drying tool adapted for grounds work. It sharply reduced the labor time for leaf removal and site cleanup -- a task that had previously required hours of raking -- and quickly became ubiquitous in commercial landscaping. Simultaneously, the commercial chemical lawn care industry emerged: ChemLawn was founded in Troy, Ohio in 1969 by Paul and Richard Duke, offering homeowners scheduled fertilizer and weed-control applications by uniformed technicians. By the mid-1970s, chemical lawn care had become firmly established as a residential service; TruGreen followed in 1973-74. The Professional Lawn Care Association of America was founded in 1979. This era created the multi-crew, route-based commercial landscaping model that still characterizes the industry today.
Effect on the workChemLawn and TruGreen grew rapidly through the 1970s and 1980s by converting DIY lawn care into a paid service. The industry employed hundreds of thousands of workers in grounds maintenance by the early 1980s. The commercial model created large numbers of driving-intensive, route-based lawn care jobs -- a workforce profile that would persist for decades.
GPS fleet management, estimating software, and smart irrigation controllers
The 1990s through 2010s brought digital tools to the logistics layer of landscaping: GPS route optimization, scheduling software, and later smart irrigation controllers transformed back-office operations. Smart irrigation controllers from companies like Rachio (launched 2014) connected weather data and soil-moisture sensing to automated scheduling -- reducing the manual watering decisions that workers previously made site by site. On the business side, field service management platforms (Jobber launched 2011; Aspire followed) automated crew dispatching, customer invoicing, and route optimization for multi-crew commercial operations. The result was not job loss but restructuring: administrative tasks that small owner-operators had done manually between job sites began migrating to software, and crew efficiency on routes improved measurably.
Effect on the workSmart irrigation cut the labor-hours spent on manual irrigation management, but the total savings per site were modest -- irrigation had never been the majority of a grounds crew's time. More significant was route optimization: Jobber-style software reduced drive time between jobs and administrative overhead for small contractors.
H-2B visa dependency, consolidation, and mobile field apps
After 2015, the landscaping industry's labor dynamics were significantly shaped by structural workforce shortages. H-2B visa certifications for seasonal workers show that landscaping services receive 31.3% of all H-2B seasonal-worker allocations -- the largest single industry share. With domestic labor markets tightening, mid-size and large landscaping contractors invested heavily in field operations software (mobile apps for time tracking, job completion documentation, and real-time crew communication). Aspire PropertyIntel, launched in 2023, introduced aerial-imagery-based property measurement that automated the site-takeoff process -- compressing proposal preparation from hours to minutes for large commercial contracts. The era also saw significant consolidation: private-equity rollups of regional landscaping contractors created larger multi-state operators with more capital to invest in technology.
Effect on the workMobile field apps increased crew accountability and reduced administrative overhead without reducing headcount. If anything, the tight labor market increased wages more than it reduced employment -- the landscaping industry's structural worker shortage meant that technology adoption was driven by the need to retain workers and serve more accounts per crew, not to replace workers with machines.
Autonomous robotic mowers and AI job scheduling (commercial scale)
Husqvarna launched its CEORA commercial robotic mower platform in December 2020, targeting large-format turf sites (schools, corporate campuses, parks, municipalities) that require continuous maintenance on open, relatively flat terrain. The EPOS (Electric Positioning Operating System) platform, using RTK satellite navigation at centimeter-level accuracy with no boundary wire, reached its commercial hundreds of EPOS model in April 2026. Electric Sheep Robotics (acquired by Oso Electric Equipment in October 2025) developed autonomous outdoor work platforms that can handle mowing and debris collection on commercial sites. The robotic mower market is growing at 18.4% CAGR through 2031. Simultaneously, AI scheduling tools within Jobber (2025 expansion) and similar platforms began automating quote generation, customer communication, and high-value job alerts -- tasks that previously required administrative staff. The combination represents the first sustained threat to the direct labor-hour model for large commercial mowing contracts.
Effect on the workOn large, flat commercial and municipal turf -- the most mechanizable segment of the market -- robotic mowing systems are beginning to displace repetitive mowing labor. But the install base is still early: at 18.4% CAGR from a small base, commercial robotic mowers will cover meaningful acreage by 2030 but are not yet transforming headcount at scale. The role for front-line workers on robotic-equipped properties shifts from operating the mower to deploying, monitoring, and servicing the robot -- a skill-upgrade rather than an elimination.
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Browse all rolesLandscaping and Groundskeeping Workers 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 85121)
- Employment, 2020
- 109,675, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 85121 Landscaping and grounds maintenance labourers, 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$42,800, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 85121 Landscaping and grounds maintenance labourers, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
United Kingdom (UK SOC 5113)
- Employment, 2025
- 33,000, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14): employee jobs in SOC 5113 Gardeners and landscape gardeners, United Kingdom, 2025 (ASHE "number of jobs", thousands x1000; excludes self-employment). Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Median pay, 2025
- £27,057, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14.7a): median gross annual pay for all employee jobs in SOC 5113 Gardeners and landscape gardeners, United Kingdom, 2025. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Australia (ANZSCO 8414)
- Employment, 2025
- 34,400, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 8414 Garden and Nursery Labourers, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
View all 32 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1859 | 4,000 | n/a | Est., The Collector Researched context | Report |
| 1900 | 75,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1900 Researched context | Report |
| 1950 | 200,000 | n/a | Est., Pennington Researched context | Report |
| 1952 | n/a | $2,100 | Est., University of Missouri Libraries Researched context | Report |
| 1979 | 400,000 | n/a | Est., Wikipedia / NALP Researched context | Report |
| 1988 | n/a | $11,960 | BLS CPS 1988 Researched context | Report |
| 1996 | n/a | $15,600 | BLS CPS 1996 Researched context | Report |
| 2000 | 754,340 | n/a | BLS OEWS 2000 Official statistic | Report |
| 2002 | n/a | $19,770 | BLS OEWS 2002 Official statistic | Report |
| 2003 | 819,780 | $19,940 | BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic | Report |
| 2004 | 860,200 | $20,420 | BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic | Report |
| 2005 | 896,690 | $20,670 | BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic | Report |
| 2006 | 924,330 | $21,260 | BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic | Report |
| 2007 | 932,730 | $22,240 | BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic | Report |
| 2008 | 921,900 | $23,150 | BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic | Report |
| 2009 | 859,960 | $23,480 | BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 829,350 | $23,400 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 821,750 | $23,410 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 830,640 | $23,570 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 839,780 | $23,940 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | 868,770 | $24,290 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 895,600 | $25,030 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 906,570 | $26,320 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 912,360 | $27,670 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 913,480 | $29,000 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 912,660 | $30,440 | BLS OEWS May 2019 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2019 (pay) Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 872,370 | $31,730 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 892,450 | $34,430 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 914,230 | $35,890 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 929,930 | $37,360 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 943,430 | $38,090 | BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 952,640 | $39,150 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |