£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?

Exactly. I do see the objection to paying £20 an hour for a job people can do with no qualifications, when teachers and nurses have slogged their way through a degree and more and aren't getting £20 an hour. Also the fact that people expect child carers to charge less than that. Most people would say their child is the most precious thing in the world but £15 an hour is seen as normal to pricey for taking care of them.

No one wants to take on weird new clients, you’re best off with a friend of a friend . When I was a tutor I charged more to any new people than my current family’s that I knew and linked as I didn’t want the extra work THAT much unless it was good money.

So then dont hire a cleaner?

I dont understand the anger about this - noone is forcing you to hire someone to clean your house. Its something most of us do daily!

My cleaner isn’t ’professional’ - she’s lovely lady but very average cleaning-wise. She’s cheap though in comparison to some on here.
My circumstances have changed since she started so I’m probably going to clean myself if/when she decides she’s had enough. I’ve cleaned 3 weeks in a row now as she’s been off and it’s been fine. It takes me longer because I tidy as I go whereas the house is always tidy before she comes.

I saw something on insta that said instead of hiring a cleaner, hire a tutor for your kids (academic or piano) , it’s hardly more expensive and they learn and while they’re occupied you get the jobs done yourself in the way you like

I think that's riduculously expensive for a cleaner. Based on an average 37.5 hour week thats an annual salary of almost £43k. Even after deducting 6 weeks pay for annual leave and bank holidays, thats still an annual salary of £38k. I don't see why their commute should be brought into it either. Nobody pays me for my commute to work. I would have expected to pay about £15=17 per hour which is still quite a bit above minimum wage

It's the market working as so many have pointed out.

No-one wants to clean toilets, it's a tough and not very interesting job. It deserves to be paid well. I earn less per hour than I'd pay a cleaner (after tax) I still use a cleaner occasionally as a luxury. They deserve it.

All this 'how can they earn so much' is snobbish classism, as if the work the working classes do is somehow lesser, it's not. It's a lot more essential than a lot of middle-class non-jobs that society could very well do without.

It reeks of snobbery to expect someone to clean up your mess so you can be out doing a more interesting job but be outraged at the market rate.

Mine is £20 ph. Brings all cleaning stuff (including hoover). When she goes my house smells amazing and feels posh hotel clean (including the fancy folded toilet rolls!)

Of course you are always going to be paid more in the private sector. I am sure a school cleaner or NHS cleaner doesn't earn 20 quid an hour. Plus they don't supply their own equipment.

They also get holiday pay.

We pay £20ph and it’s worth every penny. Usually have 3 hours a week, cleaner is well trusted & does an amazing job. Takes the stress off me so I’m happy to pay.

Mine has just gone up to £20

Of course cleaners should earn more than easier more pleasant jobs

good for them for knowing their worth

Also I have multiple degrees, and I've considered working as a cleaner to earn more money. I know someone with multiple degrees in fine art who's a cleaner (and an artist, but that doesn't pay the bills).

Being able to do a degree - given the cost these days - is a privilege and not one everyone can afford. Just because someone cleans as their job does not mean they're lesser. Just because someone does not have a degree does not mean they're lesser. Having a degree these days doesn't necessarily mean you're intelligent. It means you can pay the fees. They pretty much don't fail anyone. You have to literally not turn up for that to happen.

Some degrees (not all) train you to do an actual job. Some of which are well paid and others are not. Some degrees really don't prepare you to do anything much in the real world other than staying in academia.

Schools struggle to get cleaning staff because they either need to pay market rate or not get cleaned.

This idea that a job is 'worth' a certain amount based on the social attributes of those doing it is classism in action.

Self employed people don’t get holiday pay or sickness pay. They also have to endure their earnings factor in putting money aside for tax and NI.

I would sit in a shit tip before I would pay anyone £22 pounds an hour to clean a normal family house....I men if someone is running an abattoir in their front room then fair enough, I suppose but otherwise...stick the brush up your arse and get to fuck!

👋👋👋

I work 12-14 hour days and my neck, back, knees and wrists are shot from the sitting and typing. Can also confirm I am permanently knackered and often work weekends and during holidays.

So there you go.

There is no way a teenager could clean and take care of my house like my cleaner does. I know because I live with 2 of them.

I also think getting a kid to clean your house for pittance feels a little bit like exploitation. It’s not like babysitting, cleaning is hard manual labour.

I pay £20 per hour direct to cleaner and it’s the best £160 per week I spend!

We pay £25.69/hour (London) It’s with an agency that pays the living wage and does a lot of charitable work.

We tried cheaper, independent cleaners but they were so flaky and the cleaning quality was terrible. Now instead of being ghosted if our cleaner is ill/on annual leave they send out a replacement.

It is expensive but worth it for us (fortnightly, 2.5hours). I’d rather they were cheaper but for the consistency and quality of clean, it’s worth it.

Remember it won't be a 37.5 hour week.

At least 2 hours a day will be travelling time for most cleaners and they won't be paid for any breaks (you expect them to eat right?) So at best, let's put it at 6 hours a day. Assuming they're full with contracts. So that's 30 hours a week. Sure nobody pays you for your commute but then you're not commuting three times a day at least. And there are the costs of all that travel.

Then remember they also will do all of their own admin, invoicing, chasing debt, procurement of chemicals and materials. Let's be generous and put that at 2 hours a week. Honestly as I work for myself it's likely to be more but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. So down to 28 hours.

Then as you say, no sick pay, no holiday pay (and also no pension contributions but let's ignore that for now). Let's assume 1 week of the year in total (i.e. 5 days) too sick to work. Let's hope our cleaner never gets seriously ill. So 7 weeks deducted for holidays and sickness.

28 hours x £22 x 45 weeks = £27,720

But remember a permanent job would be paid at the pay whether on holiday or not and through travelling times if you worked in a multi site job (as I have several times in the past) so the equivalent pay if this was a directly employed job taking account of that, paid breaks, paid holiday would be:

£27,720 / (52*37.5) = £14.22 an hour. Not including all of the other costs for working for yourself.

If you think that's marvellous for a job I'd argue is skilled, then crack on.

Technically it’s only a commute if it’s to one single workplace (check your car insurance). Cleaners have to travel between jobs to multiple workplaces so if they were employed they might expect to be reimbursed for this in some way, but they can’t bill their clients for the travelling time, so it comes out of their working day and limits the number of jobs they can take (as no-one wants their cleaner round at 6am or 6pm, or at the weekend, unless they also clean offices).

Besides which, just because it might add up to a FTE salary that’s more than mine as a teacher, does that mean they shouldn’t get it? Surely the rule in business is that if you have a market for your product at your price, you take advantage of that? Comments here seem to suggest that we value not doing our own cleaning highly enough that good cleaners are in short supply; competition for the service is bound to drive prices up.

Do you consider £15 an hour too much for somebody to have the responsibility of your children? I work in childcare and it never fails to astound me that people will pay more to have their house cleaned or dog walked than pay somebody to take care of their children. I just don't understand it.

I paid £15 an hour to my cleaner 15 yrs ago and small reasonable price increase have led to a current price of £20 per hour. She doesnt provide cleaning equipment or products as that would be extra. She works quickly and thoroughly and comes one a fortnight(£100) Its expensive but worth it to me.
Demand seems to exceed supply where i live too and i have friend who pay £25 per hour .
Year ago ,i had a cleaner that seemed cheaper per hour than the going rate but she worked very slowly so needed more time to get the same job done as the more expensive rates did in less hrs .

Just for comparison:

(Experienced) Music teacher 60 min lesson: £50

So cleaner at £22-25 seems right to me

I'd love to have one, but I can't make it work in the budget and am very aware that good ones who a thorough are hard to come by.

Min wage including annual leave and 5% employers pension contributions is roughly £15/hour. Cleaners at the very least have petrol between jobs plus have “dead” time between jobs. A cleaner might only get 6 hours pay for a day whereas someone in retail would get 7.5. If I was going to be a self employed cleaner I would want at least £18 to take that into consideration. In reality I would charge what I could get.

A newly qualified nurse (bottom of band 5) gets £16.40/hour - which makes a cleaner look outrageously expensive but a nurse gets pension, a/l, and sick pay on top plus guaranteed progression to top of band and potential upbanding and can work 37.5hours pay in not much more than 37.5 hours real time plus enhance antisocial rates. The difference between band 2 and band 5 continues to shrink. I’m top of band 6 (£24.61) and wouldn’t swop it for self employed cleaning at £25. Incentivising people into responsible jobs which need STEM degrees and postgraduate qualifications when min wage and “top ups” on look like a viable alternative on paper is definitely an issue.

Agree. I only once used a baby sitter with my son and that was a team member from his after school club who I knew was trained and paid a decent hourly rate to. I just went out less or he was with his Dad. I would never leave a child in the care of my (very mature) DS now who is 15. I wouldn't think he has the emotional maturity nor training to cope with a crisis. It's baffling when I was young that adults trust kids in this way. I didn't know they still do.