Being a maid — particularly a housemaid can be a very difficult task. As a maid service business, we encounter an entire spectrum of different expectations and needs from our clients. Recently, I had a conversation with a close friend of mine, who isn’t in the business and has never hired a maid before, about how much maids make on an hourly basis. His thoughts were that experienced maids typically earn an unreasonably high rate per hour ($35-45) where I, as a company owner that pays well above the standard rate, have more realistic numbers.
See Also: 5 Reasons Why Hiring A Maid Service is Stressful
So we decided to look this up. The results surprised even me. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were a bit less than 1 million full-time employed maids last year, with an average, or ‘mean’ wage of $10.49 an hour. Now in Chicago, the pay was $11.39 an hour, which is not much different, and frankly, a low wage.
In Chicago, the pay was $11.39 an hour
This is a problem. The maid service industry is an old-school industry that hasn’t seen much change until recently, with the explosion of Web 2.0 websites that make booking an appointment a little easier (the premise of our site) with investors pouring money into financing them. Services such as ours charge a bit more for the convenience factor, and we tend to pay our maids a LOT better. This helps Web 2.0 companies two-fold:
- Higher pay means attracting higher quality cleaners
- Higher pay means cleaners perform higher-quality cleaning jobs
Of course, customers generally like knowing that their cleaners are getting a fair wage, and are working harder to make their home clean as a result.
So the question is, how much do Web 2.0 companies pay their maids?
We can’t speak for other companies, and because we pay by the job, a more efficient maid team will earn a higher effective hourly rate. However, our average maid team will make just over $20 an hour. As a result, Companion Maids has been able to hire some amazing maid teams, and our customers are pretty happy.
But that’s beside the point. The point is that your typical full-time maid cannot make enough money to pay their bills. And this is a problem. We need to focus on providing a means for making maid services valuable again so that when people pay to get their house cleaned, it’s a win/win situation for all.
