Most landscaping businesses are small. In 2023, 70.6 percent of the industry’s 117,969 employer establishments had fewer than 5 employees (Census County Business Patterns), and another 537,970 landscaping businesses had no employees at all in 2024 (Census Nonemployer Statistics). Payroll took 32.3 percent of revenue at employer firms in the 2022 Economic Census, which is why labor is the first number in any bid.
This section is for owners and operators. It covers how to price and bid work, what labor really costs once wages, taxes and drive time are counted, how to hire and keep crews, and which software is worth paying for at each size of business.
The method is the same as everywhere on the site: wage figures come from BLS, industry figures from the Census Bureau, and software prices from vendors’ own pricing pages with the date checked. Where we give a formula, we show it with the inputs, so you can run it with your own numbers.
Start with how to bid landscaping jobs, compare field-service tools in Jobber vs LMN and the software section, or post a job opening on our job board.
