The most reliable cleaning business phone statistics for 2026: 27% of home-services calls go unanswered and fewer than 3% of voicemail callers leave a message (Invoca 2024); the US janitorial industry is $112 billion across 1.26 million businesses averaging 1.9 employees (IBISWorld); and 64% of cleaners' leads come from repeat customers (Jobber). Sources and caveats for all 20 numbers follow.
How were these statistics chosen?
Most "cleaning industry statistics" posts recycle numbers from each other with no link to the original. This list applies two rules. Every figure links to the organisation that produced it, and where a popular number is weak, we say so instead of repeating it. Government data (BLS, Census) is treated as strongest, then paid industry research (IBISWorld), then vendor surveys with disclosed methods (Jobber, Invoca, Redfin, U-Haul), then everything else.
Missed calls and voicemail
1. 27% of calls to home-services businesses go unanswered. From Invoca's 2024 Home Services Call Analytics Report, based on call-tracking data across home-services companies. This is the best-sourced answer rate available for the category cleaning sits in.
2. Fewer than 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message. Same Invoca report. If you rely on voicemail while on a job, you are hearing from roughly one in 35 of the people who tried to reach you.
3. A missed sales call costs a home-services business about $1,200 on average. Invoca 2024. Caveat: the average blends HVAC, plumbing and roofing with cleaning, so the cleaning-only figure is lower per call. Use it as a ceiling, and run your own numbers with our missed-call cost formula.
4. The widely quoted "62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered" comes from a 2016 study of 85 businesses. 411 Locals tracked 85 companies across 58 industries for 30 days: 37.8% of calls were answered live, 37.8% went to voicemail and 24.3% got no response at all. It is a decade old, the sample is small, and the publisher is a marketing vendor. Treat it as a historical anecdote, not a benchmark.
5. 85% of callers who reach voicemail do not call back. A BIA/Kelsey figure originally reported by Forbes and summarised with its provenance at Hicira. Older than the Invoca data, but consistent with it.
Customer behaviour
6. 64% of cleaning companies' leads come from repeat customers, and 60% from referrals. Jobber's 2026 cleaning industry survey. Paid channels trail far behind: Angi/Thumbtack 20%, Google 17%, Local Services Ads 15%. The phone call from an existing client is as valuable as the one from a stranger.
7. 85% of cleaning companies respond to leads the same day, but only 26% respond within an hour. Same Jobber survey. Three quarters of your competitors leave a gap of more than an hour. Answering live closes it.
8. 76% of cleaning companies are at or near full capacity, and 58% report rising demand. Jobber 2026. Also from the same survey: 55% raised prices in the past year and 73% expect revenue growth in 2026. Capacity, not demand, is the constraint for most operators, which is why calls go unanswered in the first place.
Industry size
9. US janitorial services revenue is $112.0 billion in 2026. IBISWorld, Janitorial Services (NAICS 56172), up from $110.0 billion in 2025 with 1.8% growth forecast for the year and 2.2% annual growth projected to 2031. Commercial cleaning is 82.3% of that revenue ($92.2 billion).
10. There are 1,264,367 janitorial businesses in the US, up 2.4% year over year. IBISWorld, number of businesses. Business count has grown 4.3% a year on average from 2021 to 2026, faster than revenue, meaning more competitors for the same customers.
11. The average janitorial business has 1.9 employees. IBISWorld puts industry employment at 2,271,428 across those 1.26 million businesses. This is a micro-business industry: the owner is usually also the cleaner and the receptionist.
12. Only 83,041 cleaning businesses have W-2 employees. BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 561720, 2025 annual average. That is up 12.1% from 74,049 in 2019, while employment at those firms is 1,069,828 (down 2.4%) and average pay is $34,443 (up 38%). Set against IBISWorld's 1.26 million, roughly 93% of cleaning businesses have no payroll employees at all.
13. 64% of cleaning companies earn under $100,000 a year, and 40% earn under $50,000. Jobber 2026. Only 18% clear $500,000. For the majority, a handful of recurring customers won or lost on the phone moves the annual number materially.
14. Residential cleaning alone is an $18.8 billion market with 356,516 businesses. IBISWorld, Residential Cleaning Services and its business count page. Revenue grew 3.2% a year from 2019 to 2024; business count is up 3.1% year over year; no single company holds more than 5% share.
Demand and growth
15. Houston added 126,720 residents and Dallas-Fort Worth 123,557 between July 2024 and July 2025. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 estimates. Atlanta (+61,953), Phoenix (+59,065), Charlotte (+54,122), Austin (+53,796) and Orlando (+37,690) round out the fastest-growing large metros. New residents mean new households looking for a cleaner, usually by phone. We track this by state on our locations pages.
16. Sacramento, Las Vegas and Cape Coral-Fort Myers had the largest net inflows of home searchers in Q4 2025. Redfin migration report: Sacramento +4,268, Las Vegas +4,160, Cape Coral +4,098, North Port-Sarasota +4,008, Miami +3,878, Orlando +3,759. Los Angeles (−25,908) and New York (−23,080) had the largest outflows. Move-in cleans follow the movers.
17. Dallas was the number-one US growth metro for the second year running in 2025, and Florida had 8 of the top 10 growth cities. U-Haul Growth Index 2025. Houston, Austin, Charlotte and Phoenix complete the top five metros; Ocala, North Port and Kissimmee lead the cities.
18. Home-services business openings hit an all-time high of 217,000 in 2024, up 11% year over year. Yelp State of Services 2024. California (26,000), Florida (24,000) and Texas (22,000) had the most openings; Cincinnati (+23%) and Kansas City (+22%) grew fastest.
Seasonality
19. Google search interest in "spring clean" reaches 30–40 out of 100 by January and peaks in March and April, every year from 2021 to 2025. Fantastic Services' analysis of Google Trends data, published December 2025. The spring spike has become a four-month season. The American Cleaning Institute's 2025 survey found 80% of Americans plan a spring clean, 45% of them "more than usual".
20. Move-out cleaning demand peaks April through August, with the sharpest spikes in the last week of each month. CleanerHQ: leases cluster in summer, home sales close May to July, and college towns turn over in May and August. Jobber's survey adds that more than 72% of households do a major clean before the holidays, giving a second, smaller peak in November and December.
What do these numbers mean for your phone?
Put statistics 1, 2, 7 and 8 together and the picture is simple. Most cleaning companies are already at capacity, so the owner is on a job when the phone rings. About a quarter of calls go unanswered, almost nobody leaves a voicemail, and three in four companies take more than an hour to respond. Meanwhile the best lead source is the customer you already have, calling to add a deep clean or move to weekly.
Every one of those calls is answerable. A live answering service, an office hire or an AI receptionist each fix it at a different price. Zela is the last of those, built only for cleaning companies: it picks up in under a second, quotes from your price list, books into your calendar, and hands anything unusual to you. Hear it on a free demo.
FAQ
Which of these statistics are most trustworthy? The BLS and Census figures (12, 15) are government counts. IBISWorld (9, 10, 11, 14) is paid research with a consistent method. Jobber, Invoca, Redfin, U-Haul and Yelp (1–3, 6–8, 16–18) are vendor datasets with disclosed sources. The weakest is number 4, which is included only to explain why it should not be used.
Are there cleaning-specific missed-call statistics? Not from a primary source we could verify. Invoca's data is for home services as a category, which includes cleaning. Any post citing a cleaning-only unanswered rate without a method is almost certainly repeating the 2016 411 Locals number.
How often is this list updated? IBISWorld and BLS QCEW publish annually, Jobber's survey is annual, and Census population estimates arrive each spring. We revise the post when new editions land.
Sources
- Invoca, 2024 Home Services Call Analytics Report: https://www.invoca.com/blog/how-much-missed-sales-calls-cost-home-services-businesses
- 411 Locals (2016): https://411locals.us/small-business-owners-dont-answer-62-of-phone-calls/
- Hicira, missed-call statistics (BIA/Kelsey): https://www.hicira.com/missed-call-statistics
- Jobber, Cleaning Industry Trends 2026: https://www.getjobber.com/academy/cleaning/cleaning-industry-trends/
- IBISWorld, Janitorial Services: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/janitorial-services/1496/ ; number of businesses: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/number-of-businesses/janitorial-services/1496/ ; employment: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/employment/janitorial-services/1496/
- IBISWorld, Residential Cleaning Services: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/residential-cleaning-services/6542/ ; https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/number-of-businesses/residential-cleaning-services/6542/
- BLS QCEW, NAICS 561720, 2025 annual: https://data.bls.gov/cew/data/api/2025/a/industry/561720.csv (QCEW home: https://www.bls.gov/cew/)
- Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 metro and county estimates: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/2025-popest-metro-micro-counties.html
- Redfin, Q4 2025 migration report: https://www.redfin.com/news/migration-q4-2025/
- U-Haul Growth Index 2025: https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Growth-Index-Top-US-Growth-Metros-And-Cities-Of-2025-Announced-36558/
- Yelp, State of Services 2024: https://trends.yelp.com/state-of-services-2024.html
- Fantastic Services / GlobeNewswire, spring-clean search trends: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/12/23/3210122/0/en/Spring-Deep-Cleans-Are-Getting-Earlier-But-Not-Because-of-Climate-Change-Fantastic-Services-Reveals.html
- American Cleaning Institute, 2025 spring-cleaning survey: https://www.cleaninginstitute.org/newsroom/2025/are-you-ready-clean-behind-couch-americans-list-their-spring-cleaning-targets
- CleanerHQ, move-in/move-out seasonality: https://cleanerhq.com/move-inmove-out-cleaning/