When Every Cleaning Hour Costs More, Data Matters More

The cost of keeping facilities clean is rising, and the workforce needed to do the job remains difficult to maintain.

According to a recent Facility Executive article citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the median hourly wage for janitors and building cleaners increased 26.7% between May 2020 and May 2025, climbing from $13.98 to $17.71 per hour. That translates to a median annual wage of $36,840.

At the same time, BLS projects approximately 321,800 openings for janitors and building cleaners every year from 2025 through 2035. Yet total employment in the occupation is projected to grow just 2%, from approximately 2.43 million jobs in 2025 to 2.49 million in 2035. Most of those annual openings will result from workers changing occupations or leaving the workforce, not from industry growth.

For facility managers, building owners and janitorial service providers, those numbers point to a fundamental challenge:

Cleaning labor is becoming more expensive while remaining difficult to recruit and retain.

That makes using the labor you already have as effectively as possible more important than ever.

The Problem With Cleaning to a Schedule

Many facilities still operate primarily on predetermined cleaning schedules.

A conference room gets cleaned because the schedule says it should. A restroom receives service at designated intervals. An entire floor may receive the same level of attention whether it hosted 300 people that day or 30.

Meanwhile, a heavily used space may need attention before its next scheduled cleaning.

That model becomes increasingly expensive when labor costs rise.

The issue isn't that scheduled cleaning is inherently wrong. The problem is that schedules alone don't tell managers what is actually happening inside the building.

Was the space used? How heavily was it used? Did the assigned employee actually service it? How long were they there? Which areas need more attention—and which may need less?

Without that information, managers are often forced to allocate one of their most expensive and increasingly scarce resources—people—based largely on assumptions.

Move From Scheduled Cleaning to Data-Driven Cleaning

Invisible Sun Technology's approach combines Occupancy Intelligence with Proof of Presence to provide two critical pieces of information.

Occupancy data helps answer: Where is cleaning needed?

Proof of Presence helps answer: Was the work performed?

Together, they create a foundation for more intelligent cleaning operations.

Instead of treating every space the same, facility teams can use actual building activity to help prioritize labor. High-traffic areas can receive more attention. Low-use areas can potentially be serviced less frequently. Supervisors can verify that assigned personnel were present at specific locations without requiring employees to scan QR codes, tap devices or use their phones.

The objective isn't to reduce service. It's to better align service with actual demand.

Make Every Labor Hour More Valuable

The Facility Executive article also highlights the importance of workloading. ISSA cleaning-time guidance, for example, can help managers estimate labor requirements based on factors such as cleanable square footage, cleaning frequency, tasks and equipment. The article notes that a 14-inch flat mop with a dual-chamber bucket has a benchmark production rate of 5,355 square feet per hour, meaning 1,000 square feet would take approximately 11.2 minutes under the specified conditions.

Those benchmarks are valuable for determining how long work should take.

Occupancy and Proof of Presence data add another dimension: where and when that work should happen and whether it happened.

Consider a 10-floor office building operating under a hybrid work model. On Tuesday through Thursday, several floors may experience heavy traffic. On Monday and Friday, occupancy may drop dramatically.

Should every floor receive exactly the same cleaning resources every day?

With occupancy intelligence, managers can understand actual utilization patterns and better align cleaning schedules with them. Proof of Presence can then provide objective verification that employees reached their assigned locations and completed their scheduled service visits.

Instead of simply asking, "Did we follow the schedule?" managers can begin asking a better question:

"Did we deploy our resources where they were needed most?"

Better Data Can Support Better Workforce Decisions

When labor was less expensive and readily available, inefficiency could sometimes remain hidden inside operating budgets.

A 26.7% increase in median hourly wages changes that equation. So does a labor market requiring hundreds of thousands of replacement hires every year.

Facility leaders need greater visibility into how their cleaning resources are being used.

Combining occupancy intelligence and Proof of Presence can help organizations:

• Align cleaning frequency with actual building utilization.
• Verify service delivery without adding manual reporting requirements.
• Identify areas that may be over-serviced or under-serviced.
• Direct limited staff toward high-demand spaces.
• Give supervisors objective data to manage performance and compliance.
• Build historical data to improve staffing, scheduling and future contract decisions.

This isn't about asking cleaning professionals to work harder. It's about giving them—and the managers responsible for them—better information about where their time can have the greatest impact.

Don't Just Spend More. Spend Better.

Rising wages aren't necessarily a problem. Cleaning professionals perform essential work, and competitive wages can help organizations attract and retain quality employees.

The challenge is making sure increasingly valuable labor isn't being wasted.

As labor costs rise and staffing remains challenging, traditional cleaning schedules based primarily on assumptions become harder to justify.

The future is occupancy-driven, verified and data-informed cleaning.

Know where people are. Know where cleaning is needed. Know that the work was performed.

That's how facility organizations can turn limited labor resources into better outcomes.

Invisible Sun Technology helps facility leaders connect occupancy intelligence with Proof of Presence to create a more efficient, accountable and data-driven approach to facility services.

Learn how your current facility data can translate into potential productivity gains and cost savings with the Invisible Sun Contactless FM ROI Calculator or schedule a demonstration of our Proof of Presence and Occupancy Intelligence solutions.