US Pest Control Industry Statistics

The short version

• Five different published figures describe the size of the US pest control industry, ranging from $13.4 billion to $26.9 billion, and the gap is definitional rather than an error by anyone.
• The most complete public figure is $21.466 billion for 2022, from the Census Bureau’s Service Annual Survey for NAICS 561710.
• The most current figure is not a revenue figure at all. Federal revenue data stops at 2022. For 2023 onward the current measures are establishment counts, employment and wages, which run through the first quarter of 2026.
• The industry employs about 151,400 people and supports 17,933 establishments as of 2026 Q1, on Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
• Industry employment and occupational employment are different numbers. 151,410 is everyone working in the industry. Roughly 102,600 are pest control workers by occupation. Confusing the two is the most common error in writing about this sector.
• One company is about one seventh of the industry. Rollins reported revenue of $3.761 billion for calendar 2025, against total US industry revenue of $21.466 billion in 2022.
• A fifth set of numbers now circulates on social media and in forums, including a projection of $26.1 billion in 2025 rising to $32.8 billion by 2028, sourced to market research rather than to any primary collection.
• Two things cannot be measured at all. There is no producer price index and no consumer price index item for pest control, so no defensible national average service price exists. There is no public data on customer churn, revenue per technician or profit margin.

Why the numbers disagree

In short: Each figure counts a different universe, a different scope of service, and a different year, using a different collection method. The crosswalk table below states all four for each.

Search for the size of this industry and you will get a number without a definition. The most repeated page in the vertical is a trade association news post giving a one-year growth rate. Behind it sit five paywalled market-research firms whose methods are not inspectable, and whose geographic scope is frequently global while their headline reads as though it were American.

None of those sources is being dishonest. They are answering different questions. An association surveying its own members about structural service revenue is measuring something real and narrower than a Census survey of every employer firm in an industry code. A market-research firm sizing a global market including products is measuring something real and much wider.

The problem is that the definitions are almost never published alongside the figures, so the numbers get compared, averaged and quoted against each other. This page exists to make that impossible. Regulatory figures carry the same trap, and our count of federal pesticide enforcement cases separates the few aimed at pest control firms from the import cases that dominate the total.

The crosswalk

In short: Nine published figures, with the universe, scope, year and method for each. If you need one number, the recommendation section below says which to use for which purpose.

Sources as named. FRED series and BLS figures retrieved 27 September 2026. The Census Service Annual Survey series is titled “Total Revenue for Exterminating and Pest Control Services, All Establishments, Employer Firms” and was last updated on 31 January 2024.

What it means. Read the Universe and Scope columns and the disagreement dissolves. The $13.4 billion and $21.5 billion figures differ mainly because one is structural work only and the other is all of NAICS 561710. The $19.6 billion and $21.5 billion figures cover the same universe in the same year and differ because one is receipts from a business register and the other is revenue from a sample survey. The $26.9 billion figure is global.

Two collections, one year, different establishment counts. Census County Business Patterns reported 16,535 pest control establishments for 2023. The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages reported 17,341 for the same year. Neither is wrong. They are separate collections with different universes and reference dates, and the 806-establishment gap between them is a useful illustration of why a single number needs a source attached.

What limits it. We could not verify the market-research figures’ methods, because they are paywalled, which is precisely why no calculation on this site uses them. The association figures are reported in trade press rather than published as a downloadable dataset, so we cite them as published positions and not as data. Census SUSB receipts for 2022 are carried here from our earlier cost structure analysis rather than re-derived, because the Census flat-file server is currently unreachable from our environment.

The two mistakes almost everyone makes

In short: Mixing industry employment with occupational employment, and treating a global market-size forecast as a US revenue figure.

Mistake one: industry versus occupation

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes two employment counts that sound identical and are not.

Source: BLS QCEW and OEWS, retrieved 27 September 2026.

The gap of roughly 48,800 is not a discrepancy. It is the office, sales and management payroll of the industry. Our technician pay by state analysis uses the occupational measure, and our quarterly index uses the industry measure, and each says which.

Mistake two: global forecasts read as US revenue

The market-size figures that dominate search results are usually global and frequently include pesticide products as well as services. A figure of $26.9 billion for 2024 is not comparable to $21.466 billion for US services in 2022, and the difference is not growth.

What cannot be measured

In short: Two questions readers ask constantly have no public answer, and any figure presented as one is invented.

There is no national average price. There is no Producer Price Index for NAICS 561710 and no standalone Consumer Price Index item for pest control. The search term “average pest control cost” and its variants carry roughly 12,500 monthly searches between them, and every ranking answer is an aggregator estimate with no stated method. We will not publish a national average because none can be sourced. What can be sourced is cost structure, which our analysis of where pest control money goes sets out.

There is no public benchmark for churn, revenue per technician or margin. These are the most asked operator questions on this site’s topic and no federal series covers them at this industry level. The only real datasets are a paid association cost study and a paid vendor benchmark. Any blog post presenting a churn benchmark without naming one of those is not sourcing it.

Which number to use

In short: It depends on the sentence you are writing. This section gives the recommendation and the exact wording.

The largest operator against the industry

In short: Rollins, the only large US public pure-play, reported $3.761 billion of revenue for calendar 2025. That is roughly one seventh of the last measured US industry total.

Sources: Rollins revenue from SEC XBRL company facts, tag RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax, annual calendar-year frames, retrieved 27 September 2026. Industry revenue from Census Service Annual Survey via FRED REVEF56171ALLEST.

What it means. The share held steady between 11.9 and 12.6 percent across the four overlapping years, so the largest operator grew at roughly the same rate as the industry over that window rather than taking share. Our consolidation analysis and ownership map cover structure in more detail.

What limits it, and this matters. Rollins operates internationally, so its total revenue includes non-US business while the denominator is US only. The share column is therefore an upper bound on its US market share, not an estimate of it. We did not separate Rollins’ US revenue from its consolidated total. The series also ends for the denominator at 2022, which is why the later years are blank rather than estimated.

Concentration and firm size

In short: Two thirds of firms in this industry employ fewer than five people, while three firms collect more than a quarter of all receipts. That shape is what attracts acquirers.

Source: US Census Bureau, Statistics of US Businesses, 2022, NAICS 561710, by enterprise employment size. Revenue per employee is receipts divided by employees within each size class.

What it means. The three largest enterprises employ 21.7 percent of the industry workforce and collect 27.8 percent of receipts, while 65 percent of all firms employ fewer than five people. Revenue per employee rises with size, from $110,988 in the 5 to 9 band to $178,927 at the largest firms, a gap of 61 percent. A fragmented base with a measurable scale advantage is the standard precondition for consolidation, which our consolidation analysis and review of audited public-company economics cover.

What limits it. Enterprise size classes count firms rather than establishments, so a multi-location company appears once. The size bands overlap in the source, so the rows above should not be summed. These figures are for 2022, the latest SUSB year.

Three measures we derived

1. The definitional spread

Definition. The ratio of the highest to the lowest published figure purporting to describe the size of the same industry, as a measure of how much definitional choice drives the answer.

Formula. Spread = highest published figure / lowest published figure, across figures presented as the size of the US pest control industry.

Inputs. The nine figures in the crosswalk table.

Result. $26.9 billion against $13.416 billion is a spread of 2.0 times. Restricting to figures that genuinely describe US services only, $21.466 billion against $13.416 billion, the spread is 1.6 times.

Why it is useful. It quantifies the risk in citing this sector without a definition. A writer choosing between two defensible published figures can change the apparent size of the industry by 60 percent without citing anything false.

Limitations. The comparison mixes years from 2022 to 2035 and geographies from US to global, which is the point being made rather than a flaw, but it means the ratio is not a measurement of anything in the world.

2. Revenue per establishment and per employee, stated consistently

Definition. Industry revenue divided by establishment count and by employment, computed from named sources for the same year.

Formula. Revenue per establishment = Service Annual Survey revenue / QCEW annual average private establishments. Revenue per employee uses QCEW annual average employment.

Inputs. FRED REVEF56171ALLEST; BLS QCEW annual files, own_code 5.

Result. For 2022, $1,264,715 per establishment and $148,873 per employee.

Why both numbers appear elsewhere on this site with different values. Our cost structure analysis reports $139,825 revenue per employee for 2022, derived from Census SUSB receipts and SUSB employment. This page reports $148,873 from Service Annual Survey revenue and QCEW employment. Both are correct. They differ because the numerator and the denominator come from different collections with different universes. Publishing both, with their sources, is more useful than silently picking one.

Limitations. Mixing a survey numerator with an administrative denominator is a compromise, because no single collection publishes both. The level should be read as an order of magnitude and the trend as the usable signal.

3. Currency lag by measure

Definition. How stale each available measure of this industry is, expressed as the gap between today and its most recent observation.

Result, as of 27 September 2026.

Why it matters. The single most requested figure about this industry, revenue, is the stalest thing available, and the freshest measures are the ones nobody quotes. That inversion explains why so much writing about this sector uses numbers from 2022 or earlier. Anyone who needs currency should quote establishments, employment or wages and say so.

Limitations. Lags are as observed on the dates we retrieved each source and will change. The Service Annual Survey series was last updated on 31 January 2024, so its lag reflects a publication gap rather than a fixed schedule.

How to cite this page

The Pest Control Brief, “Why every number about pest control industry size is different,” 27 September 2026. Compiled from the US Census Bureau Service Annual Survey (via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST), Statistics of US Businesses 2022, County Business Patterns 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, and SEC EDGAR XBRL company facts.

Download the data

The tables in this report are published as CSV files under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You may republish, remix and build on them, including commercially, with attribution to The Pest Control Brief and a link to this page.

• How current each measure of the industry is (CSV, 5 rows)

References

1. US Census Bureau, Service Annual Survey, via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/REVEF56171ALLEST. Accessed 27 September 2026.
2. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 561710, private ownership. data.bls.gov/cew, 2026 first quarter file. Accessed 27 September 2026.
3. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, SOC 37-2021 Pest Control Workers. bls.gov/oes/current/oes372021.htm. May 2025 reference period. Accessed 27 September 2026.
4. US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR XBRL company facts, Rollins, Inc., CIK 0000084839. data.sec.gov company facts. Accessed 27 September 2026.
5. US Census Bureau, Statistics of US Businesses, 2022, NAICS 561710 by enterprise employment size. census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html. Figures carried from our earlier cost structure analysis; the flat-file server was not reachable at the time of writing.
6. US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2023. census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html. Figures carried from our earlier analyses.
7. Pest Management Professional. “US structural pest control market grew 6 percent last year”, 1 April 2026. mypmp.net. Accessed 23 September 2026. Cited as a published position.
8. National Pest Management Association, member-survey growth statements. npmapestworld.org. Accessed 23 September 2026. Cited as a published position.
9. Market-research market-size figures were located through newswire coverage and are cited only to attribute the numbers in circulation. Their methodologies are paywalled and were not inspected, so no calculation on this page uses them.

How this reference page is maintained

What this page is. A reconciliation, not a new estimate. Every figure is published by a named organisation and is reproduced here with its universe, scope, geography, year and method stated.

Sources retrieved directly. Census Service Annual Survey revenue via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST, the full 1998 to 2022 annual series. BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for NAICS 561710, private ownership, quarterly to 2026 Q1 and annual to 2024, from the open industry endpoint. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for SOC 37-2021 via the public API. Rollins revenue from SEC EDGAR XBRL company facts. All retrieved 27 September 2026.

Sources cited as published positions. The association and trade-press figures for structural service revenue and growth, and the market-research figures. No calculation on this page uses them. They appear so that a reader encountering them elsewhere can place them.

Sources carried from our earlier work. Census SUSB receipts for 2022 are cited from our cost structure analysis rather than re-derived, because the Census flat-file server is not reachable from our environment at the time of writing. Census CBP 2023 employment is cited the same way.

Confirmed not to exist. We checked and there is no Producer Price Index for NAICS 561710, no standalone Consumer Price Index item for pest control, and no public series for churn, revenue per technician or profit margin at this industry level. Those absences are reported rather than filled.

Limitations. Market-research methodologies could not be inspected because they are paywalled, so their universes are described as not disclosed rather than characterised. Association figures are member-surveyed and their response rates are not published. The Rollins share column is an upper bound because it compares consolidated global revenue against US industry revenue. Federal revenue data ends at 2022 and this page does not estimate later years.

Last reviewed: 27 September 2026.

Sources by tier

Tier 1, primary government data. US Census Bureau Service Annual Survey, via FRED. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR XBRL company facts for Rollins, Inc. Census Statistics of US Businesses and County Business Patterns, cited from our earlier analyses.

Tier 2, named industry and trade sources, cited as positions. National Pest Management Association growth statements. Pest Management Professional reporting of structural service revenue.

Tier 3, journalism and newswire. Newswire coverage of market-research releases, cited only to attribute the figures in circulation.

Excluded. Paywalled market-research figures were excluded from every calculation because their methods cannot be inspected. Forum and social-media figures, including a widely shared projection of $26.1 billion in 2025 rising to $32.8 billion by 2028, were excluded from calculations and are mentioned only as figures readers may encounter.

If you are citing this

Most quotable statistics

1. US pest control services revenue was $21.466 billion in 2022, the most recent year published by the Census Bureau.
2. Published figures for the size of this industry differ by a factor of two, from $13.4 billion to $26.9 billion, because they count different things.
3. The industry employed 151,410 people in the first quarter of 2026, of whom roughly 102,600 are pest control workers by occupation.
4. Rollins, the largest public operator, reported $3.761 billion of revenue for 2025, against a last-measured industry total of $21.466 billion.
5. No producer price index or consumer price index item exists for pest control, so no defensible national average service price can be published.

Data limitations to quote alongside them

Federal revenue data ends at 2022. Industry employment and occupational employment are different measures and are not interchangeable. Market-research figures are usually global and often include products. Rollins operates internationally, so its share of US industry revenue is an upper bound.

Fields in the published CSV files

Figure; source organisation; programme or series ID; reference year; geography; universe; scope; collection method; free and public; URL; retrieval date.

Press summary

Published estimates of the size of the US pest control industry differ by a factor of two, from $13.4 billion to $26.9 billion, and the gap is definitional rather than an error, according to a reconciliation by The Pest Control Brief. The most complete public figure is $21.466 billion for 2022, from the Census Bureau’s Service Annual Survey. The $13.4 billion figure covers structural work only and comes from an industry association survey. Figures above $26 billion are typically global and often include pesticide products rather than services alone. Federal revenue data stops at 2022, so the most current measures of the industry are establishment counts, employment and wages, which show 17,933 establishments and 151,410 employees in the first quarter of 2026. The analysis also identifies two figures that cannot be sourced at all: there is no price index for pest control and no public data on customer churn or revenue per technician.

Five headlines editors could use

1. Why estimates of the pest control industry differ by a factor of two
2. $13.4bn, $19.6bn, $21.5bn or $26.9bn: all correct, all different
3. The freshest data about this industry is the data nobody quotes
4. One company is about a seventh of American pest control
5. The two pest control numbers that do not exist

Questions about these figures

How big is the US pest control industry?

$21.466 billion in services revenue in 2022, on the most complete public measure, the Census Bureau’s Service Annual Survey for NAICS 561710. Other figures in circulation count structural work only, or include products, or cover the world rather than the United States.

Why does the association figure differ from the Census figure?

Scope. The $13.416 billion association figure covers structural pest control service revenue. The Census figure covers all of NAICS 561710. The association figure is also for 2025 while the Census figure is for 2022.

What is the most current figure available?

Not a revenue figure. Establishment counts, employment and wages run through the first quarter of 2026: 17,933 establishments, 151,410 employees, $1,174 average weekly wage. Revenue data ends at 2022.

How many people work in pest control?

151,410 in the industry as of 2026 Q1, which includes office, sales and management staff. About 102,620 work as pest control technicians by occupation, as of May 2025.

Who is the largest pest control company?

Rollins, by revenue among US public companies, at $3.761 billion for calendar 2025. See our ownership map.

What is the average cost of pest control?

No sourceable national average exists, because there is no producer price index for this industry and no consumer price index item. Any figure presented as a national average is an estimate without a stated method. Our cost structure analysis covers what can be established.

Is the industry growing?

Yes on every current measure. Establishments rose 2.4 percent and average weekly wages 5.9 percent year over year in 2026 Q1. Over the longer run, real revenue grew 3.68 percent a year from 1998 to 2022. See our quarterly index and our analysis of whether pest control is recession-proof.

What is the average customer churn rate?

No public dataset reports it. The only real sources are a paid industry association cost study and a paid vendor benchmark. Any blog post giving a churn benchmark without citing one of those has no source.

Why can I not just average the published figures?

Because they measure different universes, scopes, geographies and years. Averaging $13.4 billion of US structural service revenue with $26.9 billion of global market value produces a number that describes nothing.

Where can I get the underlying data?

The revenue series is free from FRED at series ID REVEF56171ALLEST. Establishment and employment data is free from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages open industry endpoint for NAICS 561710. Occupational wages are free from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme for SOC 37-2021. Rollins financials are free from SEC EDGAR.