£22 per hour for cleaning - REALLY?!

[DorotheaShottery]

I was thinking the other day "Dot - you've had enough of this cleaning lark - get yourself a cleaner!"

I put some feelers out on FB and it appears the going rate is £20-£22 per hour!!

Is that normal in the not-SE-not-Cheshire parts of the UK? AIBU to think it's ridiculous?

I pay £21 an hour. They work so hard and it’s worth every penny.

Mumsnet is full of snobs. It's so vulgar.

If it's through an agency though, the agency will have to pay employer's NI, holiday pay, insurance plus potentially travel costs, some money in reserve to cover sickness etc. And of course the agency need to pay their staff and make a profit.

Even if it isn't through an agency, there are things like insurance to take care of, travel costs etc. Cleaning products if they provide them. Plus if you are working for yourself, why wouldn't you pay yourself more than minimum wage for all the hassle and insecurity of being self employed? You would also want to cover the time you are travelling from one client to another (not just petrol). If you don't do all this, you may as well work in any othet minimum wage job and have someone else worry about running the business.

While I agree with this, I do disagree with the fact that people will cover holidays. I never had that - some colleagues might handle urgent queries that came in (but I would do the same for them) but ultimately, the work had to be done before and after the holiday. This seems quite standard- at least once you get to a certain level. By the time someone gets up to speed with what they are doing, you are back.

Interesting. You post in AIBU, when you clearly feel you are not

I tried a couple of sessions with a cleaner at £23 an hour but I was really disappointed with the results. so now I pay myself 😂.

I charge £25 per hour for a regular clean and £35 per hour for a deep clean. Fully registered and insurance and also fully booked out for months in advance. Currently no space until after summer!

True, its not as if they're actual human beings who need a decent wage to survive. How cheeky of them.

I pay 50 for 3 hrs in london. There's a lot of competition and I could get a person for 14/hr (widely advertised on the next door app)... i know its more elsewhere and I'm grateful for her.

And I notice that she didn’t set up a poll so we can’t let her know that she is 🤣

I’m Scotland! Get your prices up!

Older adults probably have bills to pay. Maybe you try to live off 15 hours of after school salary.

As many others have mentioned, being self employed you need to cover travel, insurance, clothing, equipment, products, pension, holiday pay, travel.

Window cleaners (typically male) charge £15-20 for cleaning your windows which takes them about 15 minutes at most and people rarely complain. Yet people expect house cleaners (typically female) to charge that for an hours work.

I was prepared to change my opinion but I still think £22 is way too high. It's nice that so many people are happy to pay though, keeps money circulating in the economy.

Window cleaners (typically male) charge £15-20 for cleaning your windows which takes them about 15 minutes at most and people rarely complain

There was a thread on MN a while back and the majority didn't use a window cleaner.

And I notice that she didn’t set up a poll so we can’t let her know that she is

Oh god I never bother with polls - I'm here to chat!

You can think that, but if you can't find a cleaner for less than that, that's what they cost.

You might think prices for a given service are crazy, but it's utterly irrelevant whether you understand why they cost that or whether they could theoretically possibly cost less.

Strangely the people trying to claim that a self employed cleaner asking £22 an hour is bringing home more than whatever profession they think earns less yet consider more worthy, don't mention that they're handing in their notice in order to get rich as cleaners... I can't imagine why not...

Good on them. What people seem to miss when they say “well I’m only on £30 per hour and I’m a XYZ”, is that yes, cleaners may seem like they get paid a lot, but actually they are only generally doing a couple of hours work, then have to travel to the next job. And there will be a limit to how many hours they can do a day, cleaning is hard on the body and there’s very few who may be able to manage more than 6 hours per day, if that.

And if they are good, they deserve it. I would argue that it is not unskilled work at all, to do it well. I used to manage two large guest rentals, and I was in charge of hiring and firing cleaners, and it is very rare to find one who can actually do the job well and efficiently.

The problem ultimately is that the minimum wage has been set at an insanely high level. An 20 something Australian colleague was saying the other day that the crazy thing in the UK is that people in their 40s and 50s expect to be able to do 40 hour low skilled low paid jobs and support a family off that, but that's not how it works in Australia or other countries.

The combination of the crazily high minimum wage and high level of welfare is a curb on economic activity. People don't spend money on services because the high cost makes it not worth it.

Of course its a luxury most people work and don't have cleaners. I would happily pay someone £22 an hour to save my weekend if I had the money

And the majority don't use cleaners. Its a luxury and if you want it you pay for it

But you still can’t reasonably live on NMW, because the cost of everything like rent, food, and fuel is so high. If NMW were lower, that would just mean more people qualifying for top-up support or living in poverty, which is essentially the government subsidising employers like Tesco, Amazon et al, and why would that be a good use of taxpayer money? (And poverty is really expensive.)

I am trying to understand your point of view OP.

If there is demand for their service at this price, then they’re charging the market rate. Why would you expect them to charge less than this?

I don’t know what your job is, but would you really ask for a lower salary than the amount you know your boss is willing to pay?

If cleaning is really such a great, easy, low skilled, well paid job then surely loads of people will start becoming cleaners soon which will solve the problem as supply will increase and prices will reduce…

I hate cleaning, if need at least that to do it as a job. I'd also love to have a cleaner but can't get the house tidy enough for anyone other than us to clean it 🫠 it's my next goal, get a cleaner, a good one and not have an embarrassing house anymore...😂

This is what I’m struggling with too, it’s not a particularly high self employed rate as it is, and then for this it’s a hard labour job, takes toll on the body over time, then you’ve to go and do quotes, plus schedule of clients to run in your free time plus income and expenses correctly recorded, chasing payments in etc, catching up with clients requests, just all of the admin to do at home, then there’s all the travel costs plus travel time, so why even question it 🤷‍♀️