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Two audiences, one set of numbersFor operators
Owners, branch managers and technicians
- Market Density IndexEstablishments per 100,000 residents, all 50 states
- State Licensing TrackerExams, fees, CEU hours and renewal cycles
- Technician Pay by StateBLS wage percentiles against local cost of labor
- What your business is worthMultiples, per-account values and what lifts them
For property owners
Homeowners, landlords and facility managers
- What pest control should costWhere your money actually goes
- Termite treatment pricesWhat each method costs and what the warranty covers
- Bed bug treatment pricesHeat against chemical, and the total cost to clear it
- How to check a companyVerify the licence before you sign the contract
The industry in numbers
How we source these →16,535
Pest control establishments
▲ 2.8% vs 2022
139,150
Industry employees
▼ 0.5% vs 2022
$45,250
Median technician pay
BLS May 2025
$7.44B
Annual industry payroll
▲ 5.7% vs 2022
Census counts everyone employed in the industry. BLS counts the occupation. Two different populations, and we never mix them.
Chart of the week
Full table and method →Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 561710; Census Vintage 2024 population estimates. Calculated by The Pest Control Brief.
Pest control companies are not spread anything like the population. Florida carries 9.85 establishments per 100,000 residents. Minnesota carries 1.80. Excluding the District of Columbia, that is a 5.5× spread between the densest and thinnest state markets.
The pattern runs the opposite way on pay. The densest markets are warm, humid and competitive, and they pay near the bottom. The thinnest are cold, seasonal and short of licensed applicators, and they pay the most.
Standing reference
Updated as new federal data publishes
Market Density Index
Establishments per 100,000 residents, all 50 states
Technician Pay by State
Median, 10th and 90th percentile wages, BLS May 2025
Where Your Money Goes
Industry receipts, payroll share and revenue per employee
Licensing: The Federal Framework
The 15 applicator categories and the five-year rule
How to Check a Company
Verify the licence and read the contract terms
Methodology
Every source we use and what we refuse to publish
How we work
Public data only
Every figure on this site comes from a named public dataset with a year and a link. Census County Business Patterns, BLS occupational statistics, EPA registration records and state licensing boards. If we cannot source it, we do not publish it.
The workings are shown
Where we calculate something, we say what we divided by what. Our indexes are reproducible from the same public files, and we publish the file names we pulled them from.
No lead selling
We do not sell your details to contractors and we do not rank companies for payment. Pricing pages exist to tell you what a fair number looks like, not to route you to whoever paid most.