In the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, the people who clean offices earn a mean of $18.15 an hour, a little below the national mean of $19.66, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for May 2025. That number matters to you because a cleaning bill is mostly labor. The wage is the foundation the whole quote is built on.
So when you compare office cleaning quotes here, you’re really comparing what each company is paying to put trained people in your building. A fair local price tracks that local wage.
And it cuts the other way too. A quote that comes in well under the local wage isn’t a bargain waiting to be grabbed. It’s a math problem, and the shortfall has to come out of somewhere.
What Cleaning Workers Actually Earn Here
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks wages by occupation and by metro area. For building and grounds cleaning and maintenance in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre metro, the mean hourly wage was $18.15 in May 2025. Nationally, the same work paid $19.66. So local cleaning wages run a bit under the national average, roughly 8 percent lower.
That metro area, the way the government draws it, covers Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wyoming counties. If your office sits anywhere in that footprint, this is the labor market your cleaning company hires from.
Cleaning isn’t the only job that pays less here than nationally. Across all occupations, the local mean is $27.31 an hour against $33.54 nationally. Northeastern Pennsylvania is a lower wage market than the country as a whole, and cleaning sits inside that pattern.
Wages are the biggest input to a quote, though they’re far from the only thing you’ll weigh, and our guide to office cleaning services lays out the other decisions an office buyer runs into.
Why That Wage Is Most of Your Quote
Cleaning is about as close to pure labor as a service gets. There’s no expensive equipment amortized into every visit, no costly materials leaving with the job. What you’re paying for, mostly, is time: people on-site, doing the work.
A typical office cleaning price breaks down into a handful of parts:
- Wages for the crew doing the work, the single biggest piece
- Payroll costs on top of wages: the employer’s share of Social Security, unemployment taxes, and any benefits
- Supplies and equipment, a smaller line than most people assume
- Overhead and margin, the cost of running an insured, managed company
Labor and the payroll costs stacked on it are the bulk of nearly every office cleaning bill. Put rough numbers on it. If a cleaner spends two hours on your office at about $18 an hour, that’s $36 in wages for that visit, and the employer’s payroll taxes add roughly another 8 to 12 percent on top, before a dollar goes to supplies, insurance, or managing the account.
That’s why the local wage isn’t a side detail, it’s the engine of the price. It’s also why Pennsylvania lets you exclude the labor portion from sales tax when it’s stated separately, a rule we cover in our guide to the separately stated labor rule.
Why National Price Benchmarks Overshoot Here
Plenty of online guides quote a national price per square foot or per hour for office cleaning. Those numbers are built on national wages, and national wages are higher than ours.
Remember the gap: the local mean across all jobs is $27.31 an hour versus $33.54 nationally, and cleaning specifically is $18.15 against $19.66. A price benchmark calculated on national labor will read high for this market, because the labor underneath it costs more than it does here.
That’s good news for a local buyer. A fair Scranton or Wilkes-Barre quote can land below a national estimate and still pay a proper wage. If you want the actual ranges for the area, our guide to commercial cleaning costs in Pennsylvania walks through them. The point here is simpler: don’t judge a local quote against a national yardstick, because the yardstick is measuring a different labor market.
When a Low Quote Is Actually a Red Flag
A quote can be low for a good reason, a tighter scope, an efficient route, an honest local wage. But a quote that’s low enough to imply paying below the local cleaning wage is telling you something, and it isn’t that you found a deal.
If the labor is the biggest part of the bill, and the local wage for that labor is about $18 an hour, then a price that couldn’t possibly cover $18 an hour has to make up the difference somewhere. Usually it’s one of these:
- Paying below market wages, which means high turnover and a rotating cast of untrained cleaners in your building
- Cutting the hours or the scope quietly, so the crew is in and out faster than the job needs
- Skipping the costs of a real company, like insurance, bonding, or proper payroll taxes
None of those show up on the quote. They show up later, in inconsistent cleaning, in a crew you don’t recognize, or in a liability problem that lands on you. A rock-bottom price isn’t free money; it’s a bill that gets paid in quality or in risk.
What This Means When You Read Your Next Quote
Start by expecting the price to track the local wage. Cleaning here is built on about $18 an hour of labor plus the payroll costs on top, so a fair quote reflects that, and a quote that clearly can’t should raise an eyebrow.
Then ask the question that cuts through it: how many labor hours does this quote buy? A company confident in its price will tell you how many people, how often, and for how long. That’s the real thing you’re purchasing, and it’s the number to compare across bids, not just the total at the bottom.
If you’re weighing office cleaning in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, we price to the local market and we’ll show you the hours behind the number. Call (800) 851-0806 for a free quote you can actually compare.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do cleaners make in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area?
For building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, the mean hourly wage in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre metro was $18.15 in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a little below the national mean of $19.66. The metro area covers Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wyoming counties.
Why is my office cleaning quote priced the way it is?
Because a cleaning bill is mostly labor. Wages for the crew, plus the payroll taxes and benefits on top, make up the bulk of almost every office cleaning price. Supplies, equipment, overhead, and margin are smaller pieces. So the local wage is the main thing driving what you pay.
Are national office cleaning cost estimates accurate for Pennsylvania?
They tend to run high for this market. National price guides are built on national wages, and wages in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area are below the national average, both for cleaning ($18.15 vs $19.66 an hour) and across all jobs ($27.31 vs $33.54). A fair local quote can land under a national estimate and still pay a proper wage.
Is a cheap office cleaning quote a red flag?
It can be. A quote so low that it couldn’t cover the local cleaning wage of about $18 an hour has to make up the gap somehow, usually by paying below market wages, cutting hours or scope, or skipping the costs of a properly insured company. Those problems show up later as inconsistent cleaning or liability you didn’t sign up for.
How much of an office cleaning bill is labor?
The large majority. Cleaning needs little expensive equipment and few materials, so most of what you pay covers people’s time on-site, plus the payroll costs attached to their wages. That’s why the local wage has such a direct effect on the price, and why the labor portion is large enough that Pennsylvania lets you exclude it from sales tax when it’s stated separately.
What is a fair price for office cleaning in northeastern Pennsylvania?
A fair price is one that covers the local cleaning wage of roughly $18 an hour plus payroll costs, for the number of labor hours your building actually needs. Rather than chase the lowest total, compare quotes on how many people and hours each one buys. That’s the real measure of what you’re getting.