Cleaning is the job that every office, hospital, hotel and warehouse needs and almost nobody regulates. That sounds like an advantage until you compare three adverts. A Houston janitorial company offers “$15/hour, 1099, bring your own supplies”. A Kent contractor wants “enhanced DBS, 6am to 9am, Mon to Fri, NLW”. A Lagos facility management firm wants “cleaners for corporate contract, guarantor required, monthly pay”. The absence of a licence means the important things are hidden in the employment terms, and the terms differ by market.
What follows is the market-by-market version, covering the questions that decide whether an offer is good: your employment status, what checks the site needs, who pays for travel, and what happens when a contract changes hands. Then the parts that are the same everywhere: sectors, shifts, chemicals and machines, how pay is built, and an application a contracts manager can act on.
United States: no licence, but your employment status decides everything
There is no federal or state licence for a cleaner. The industry is built on building service contractors that hold janitorial contracts for offices, retail and industrial sites, usually cleaning after hours, and on franchised and independent domestic cleaning companies. The single most important line in a US cleaning advert is whether you are hired as an employee (W-2) or an independent contractor (1099).
| W-2 employee | 1099 contractor | |
|---|---|---|
| Overtime after 40 hours | Yes, at 1.5 times the regular rate | No |
| Injured at work | Workers' compensation covers you | Your own problem unless you carry insurance |
| Payroll taxes | Employer pays half of Social Security and Medicare | You pay both halves through self-employment tax |
| Equipment and chemicals | Provided by the employer | Usually bought by you |
| Who sets the schedule | The employer | You, in genuine self-employment; the company, in misclassification |
Misclassification is widespread in janitorial work. If a company tells you which buildings to clean, at what hours, with its supplies, under a supervisor, you are an employee under the economic-reality test the Department of Labor applies, whatever the paperwork says, and several states, California under its ABC test above all, are stricter still. Genuine contractor status exists, mostly for domestic cleaners who find their own clients. Ask which one the job is before you ask about the rate, because the rate means different things in each case.
Chemicals, training and the wage floor
OSHA’s Hazard Communication standard requires the employer to train you on the chemicals you use and to keep safety data sheets available; hospital and clinical sites add bloodborne pathogen training under a separate standard. These are on the employer, not you, and an employer that hands you a bottle without telling you what is in it is in breach. Pay floors vary widely: the federal minimum is $7.25, but the states and cities where most commercial cleaning happens set much higher minimums, and cleaners working under the federal Service Contract Act on government buildings are entitled to locally prevailing wage and benefit rates. Check your state and city minimum before you judge an offer.
US cleaning openings on Hirovo are grouped by county: cleaning jobs in Los Angeles County, Harris County (Houston) and King County (Seattle) are three of the largest markets.
Create a free Hirovo profile, add cleaning to your skills and set your location. New posts near you appear on their own, so you are not checking notice boards and agencies every morning.
Create a free account →United Kingdom: DBS checks, TUPE and the National Living Wage
The UK has no cleaner’s licence either, but it has three things that shape the job more than any licence would.
Checks by site type
Cleaning in a school, hospital, care home or anywhere else with children or vulnerable adults requires a Disclosure and Barring Service check, usually enhanced, and usually arranged and paid for by the employer because only an employer can apply for an enhanced check on your behalf. Applying to a school contract without an existing DBS is normal; the check is the first step after the offer, and it can take a few weeks. Corporate and government sites may want a basic DBS or a five-year employment history for security screening, similar to what the guarding industry uses. The BICSc (British Institute of Cleaning Science) skills card is the recognised training standard for commercial cleaning and many contractors put new starters through it; it is not a legal requirement, but it is what a contracts manager means by “trained cleaner”.
When the contract changes hands, you usually go with it
Most commercial cleaning in the UK is outsourced, and contracts are re-tendered every few years. When a client moves from one contractor to another, the TUPE regulations generally transfer the staff working on that contract to the incoming company on their existing pay, hours and continuity of service. The new contractor cannot simply re-hire you on a lower rate, and dismissals connected to the transfer are automatically unfair in most cases. This is why long-serving cleaners on a single site can have worked for four different companies without changing jobs. Ask, at interview, whether the site you would clean is a recent transfer; it tells you whether the terms are settled.
Pay, zero-hours and travel time
The floor is the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over, with lower age bands below that; the rate changes every April, so check gov.uk for the current figure. Two traps sit around it. First, zero-hours contracts are legal and common, and they mean no guaranteed hours; ask for the actual hours worked by the last person on the rota. Second, travel between sites during the working day counts as working time for minimum wage purposes, so a mobile cleaner paid only for time on site can be underpaid without anyone intending it. Keep your own record of hours and travel. Chemicals are covered by the COSHH regulations: the employer must assess and train, and colour-coded equipment (typically red for toilets, blue for general, green for kitchens, yellow for clinical) is standard on any professional contract.
UK openings on Hirovo are listed by county: see cleaning jobs in Essex, Kent and Surrey.
Nigeria: the company holds the contract, and the contract holds your terms
Commercial cleaning in Nigeria runs through facility-management and cleaning companies that hold contracts with banks, telecoms, hotels, hospitals, office towers and residential estates, and through outsourcing firms that supply staff to those companies. There is no licence for a cleaner and no state-issued card. What separates good work from bad is entirely in the employment relationship.
The better operators, those holding corporate and multinational contracts, hire on written terms, pay monthly through payroll, remit pension contributions under the Pension Reform Act, provide uniform and equipment, and run supervision and shift discipline. The weaker end of the market pays daily in cash with nothing written down, supplies nothing, and can end the arrangement without notice. The Labour Act requires written particulars within three months of starting; ask for them at the start, and ask specifically whether the pension deducted from your pay is actually being remitted. Employers commonly ask for a guarantor, referees and sometimes a police character certificate for corporate or estate work; that is normal and is a sign the contract is real.
Nigerian openings on Hirovo are grouped by local government area: cleaning jobs in Kosofe, Lagos, Uvwie (Warri), Delta State and Sabon Gari (Zaria), Kaduna.
The site decides the job far more than the title does
“Cleaner” covers at least six different working lives with different hours, different supervision and different pay.
- Office and commercial. Early morning (typically 05:00 to 09:00) or evening (18:00 to 22:00), on a rota, to a written specification. Predictable, part-time, often combined with a second contract.
- Retail and hospitality. Sales floors, changing rooms, hotel public areas. Daytime presence, public contact, faster pace.
- Industrial and warehouse. Large floors, ride-on machines, dust and loading areas. Safety boots and hi-vis, sometimes nights.
- Hospital and clinical. Infection control, decontamination, colour-coded zones, training and checks. Higher rate, more rules, more stable.
- Domestic. Private homes, daytime, alone, per hour or per visit. Trust, keys, and clients who recommend you. The route to self-employment.
- Specialist. End-of-tenancy deep cleans, carpet and upholstery extraction, window and high-level work, kitchen deep cleans. Paid per job, skill-based, often the best money.
If you are new, commercial evening work teaches the specification, the sign-off sheets and the machines without much public contact. If you are experienced and stuck at the basic rate, the moves that pay are clinical, machine work, supervisor, and specialist jobs priced per job rather than per hour.
Early starts, split days and how the pay is actually built
The early morning and late evening pattern is the industry standard, and it means many cleaners hold two contracts and a gap in the middle. Four things about the money are worth checking before you accept.
The unsociable-hours premium is contractual, not statutory. No law in the three markets sets a night or early rate for cleaners. If it is not written in your terms, it does not exist; ask for the figure per hour.
Travel time and travel cost. Between sites during the working day: paid in the UK for minimum-wage purposes and generally compensable in the US; a transport allowance is more common in Nigeria. Ask for the figure and get it in writing.
Equipment and chemicals. Provided on any professional contract in all three markets. A job that asks you to bring your own bottles is either domestic self-employment, in which case price them in, or a sign of an operator cutting corners.
Hours that are real. A zero-hours or casual contract can mean thirty hours a week or four. Ask how many hours the last person on this rota actually worked, and whether cover shifts are offered first to existing staff.
Nobody legitimate charges you to start a cleaning job. Not a uniform deposit, not an equipment or chemical fee, not a “registration” or “guarantor form” fee, not a DBS or medical fee paid to a recruiter rather than to the issuing body, and not a payment that is “refunded after your first month”. In the UK, an employer that needs a DBS check applies for it and normally pays for it. In the US and Nigeria there is no card to buy at all. The other pattern to refuse: sending copies of your ID, bank details or a photograph of yourself holding your ID before a verified written offer from a company whose address and registration you have checked. Those files are enough to open accounts in your name.
An application a contracts manager can act on in five seconds
Whoever reads your application has a site with a gap on the rota tomorrow morning. They want to know whether you can be put on it. Put that at the top.
- Line one: checks and training you already hold, with dates. UK: DBS (type and date, and whether it is on the update service), BICSc, COSHH. US: any hospital or hazard training. Nigeria: guarantor and referees ready, police certificate if you have one.
- Line two: the sites you have cleaned, by type and size. “Office block, 4 floors, 3 hours a night, team of 2” or “Hospital ward cleaning, 18 months” tells a manager where you fit. A list of company names tells them nothing.
- Line three: machines and specialisms. Rotary scrubber, ride-on sweeper, carpet extractor, pressure washer, high-level work. Name them.
- Line four: availability in rota words. Early mornings from 05:00, evenings to 22:00, weekends, split days, cover at short notice.
- Line five: where you live and how you travel. A 05:00 start with no bus is the most common reason a new cleaner leaves in the first month. Say how you get to site.
- Finally, a supervisor who will give a reference. Cleaning contracts run on trust: keys, alarm codes, unlocked offices at night. A named supervisor who vouches for you is worth more than any certificate.
Going self-employed in domestic cleaning
Domestic cleaning is the one part of the trade where genuine self-employment is common and often pays better than an hourly job. It is also where people under-price the work and end up earning less than they did employed, so it is worth doing the arithmetic before you start.
Your rate has to cover more than your time. Travel between clients is unpaid, so a two-hour job forty minutes away is really a three-and-a-half-hour job. Materials and equipment are yours, including a vacuum that will not last long under professional use. You need public liability insurance, which clients and agencies will ask for, and accidental damage cover is worth having the first time you break something. There is no holiday pay, no sick pay and no pay for the weeks a client goes away, so a working year is closer to 44 weeks than 52. And you pay your own tax: self-assessment in the United Kingdom, self-employment tax in the United States, and personal income tax in Nigeria.
A reasonable way to price is to decide the hourly amount you want to take home, add roughly a third for the costs and unpaid weeks above, then check that number against what agencies charge in your area, since clients compare. Charge per visit rather than per hour once you know a property, because you get faster and an hourly rate punishes you for that.
The rest is straightforward business practice that most cleaners learn the hard way. Get the key arrangement in writing. Agree what is included and what is not, because “a clean” means something different to every household. Take payment by transfer on a schedule rather than cash when you remember. Give notice periods in both directions. And keep two or three commercial or agency shifts while you build a private client list, because domestic work takes months to fill and clients cancel.
Where cleaning jobs are listed on Hirovo
Listings are grouped by country, region and county or local government area, so you can search where an early start is actually reachable.
- United States: Los Angeles County · Harris County · King County · all locations in Washington
- United Kingdom: Essex · Kent · Surrey · all locations in England
- Nigeria: Kosofe, Lagos · Uvwie, Delta State · Sabon Gari, Kaduna · all locations in Delta State
Summary
Because nobody licenses cleaners, the important facts live in the employment terms: whether you are an employee, what checks the site needs, whether travel is paid, whether the hours are real, and what happens when the contract moves. Ask those five questions before you ask about the hourly rate.
Then let the work speak in specifics. Site types and sizes, machines by name, the shifts you can cover and a supervisor who will vouch for you. A contracts manager who reads that in the first four lines puts you on tomorrow’s rota.