Skip to content

home service economic report

Summer Edition

Download Report

Introduction

Small businesses make up 47% of the private labor force and contribute 44% to GDP in the United States1. More than 200,000 residential cleaners, landscapers, HVAC technicians, and more, keep track of jobs and charge their customers for work using Jobber. As the leading job tracking and customer management platform, Jobber is uniquely positioned to identify aggregate trends and insights in this important small business segment.

There was a significant drop in revenue across nearly every major category as COVID-19 spread across the U.S. Although Home Service was not immune to the pandemic’s impact on the economy, the category fared better than most overall. The largest declines appeared in March and April when shelter-in-place orders were put in place and both businesses and consumers were mandated to change their behaviors. The summer season brought rejuvenation to Home Service, especially in June where the category experienced record high year-over-year growth in new work scheduled. Though growth across Home Service slowed slightly during July and August, the category overall is nearly at pre-COVID levels and showing healthy growth year-over-year. 

This report will analyze the performance of the Home Service category in 2020 in key areas such as revenue growth, consumer demand, and employment. To help put the performance of the category into context, the report will show comparisons to other major categories, such as Food and Beverage Stores, Clothing Stores, and Restaurants. It will also discuss some industry trends such as electronic payments and consumer interaction to provide insight into consumer behavior. Lastly, the report will highlight the types of businesses that operate within Home Service, and dive deeper into the performance of key segments such as Cleaning, Contracting, and Green businesses.

Home Service Category Performance

CUSTOMER DEMAND AND REVENUE

At the start of Q1, the Home Service category saw positive growth in new work scheduled, which declined sharply in March and even more significantly in April when the country began implementing stay-at-home directives. New work being scheduled is an early indicator of the health of these businesses, and a proxy for consumer demand.

New work scheduled started to show signs of recovery from May onwards, and hit a record high for the year in June with 17% growth year-over-year. The growth has slowed down slightly in Q3, but continues to look healthy year-over-year, and is back to pre-COVID levels.

Median revenue is following a similar pattern. The spike in June is followed by slower, but healthy growth, from July to September. Revenues haven’t quite reached pre-COVID levels, and this is a dynamic that might linger for a while as the economy overall takes time to recover. The same pattern appears in employment data and other key metrics, as well.

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • Home Service category stabilizing after initial COVID-19 volatility
  • Overall, YoY growth now exceeding pre-pandemic levels in new work scheduled, and very healthy YoY growth in revenue
  • Employment in Home Service has rebounded quicker than most major categories but recovery is slow
New Work Scheduled YoY – Home Service
New Work Scheduled YOY - Home Service graph
Median Revenue YoY – Home Service
Median Revenue YOY - Home Service Graph

Employment

Although the U.S. unemployment rate has seen a positive trend for the last five years, this all changed as a result of the pandemic, with the biggest impact coming in April 2020. In April, unemployment shot up to a record high of 14.7% largely as a result of COVID-19 related layoffs. Since then, there has been an improvement in this rate related to the re-opening of the economy. By July, the unemployment rate improved to 10.2%, and further to 7.9% by September. 2

To assess employment in the Home Service category, we look at how it compares to Total Nonfarm employment.3 Although the Home Service category spans a vast amount of industries, two North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) categories make up a large portion of the businesses in this category. Services to Buildings and Dwellings refers to most businesses that make up Cleaning and Green businesses such as pressure washing and landscaping, while Specialty Trade Contractors refers to Contracting businesses such as plumbing and HVAC.

Total Nonfarm employment was growing over 1% year-over-year in Q1, and then fell to -13.4% in April. There has been slow improvements every month since then, but employment remains on a decline year-over-year, with Q3 seeing an average of around -7%.

Home Service began 2020 with positive growth on a year-over-year basis in Q1, outpacing the employment growth in Total Nonfarm. However, when stay-at-home orders came into effect towards the end of March and into April, employment fell in Home Service by -12.9% year-over-year. This was just slightly better than the overall effect on Total Nonfarm. Since then, employment in Home Service has recovered quicker than Total Nonfarm, with Q2 seeing rapid recovery from -12.9% in April to -4.9% year-over-year in June 2020. Q3 has continued to improve, though the recovery has slowed down, with September still seeing a -3.9% year-over-year decline in employment. This employment dynamic is still much better than Total Nonfarm.

Employment Rate YoY

HOME SERVICE COMPARED TO OTHER CATEGORIES

REVENUE

Using U.S. Census Bureau data, we see that a lot of major categories experienced similar positive revenue growth at the start of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic entered the country and the ensuing policy changes impacted the economy, there was a lot of volatility starting in March. With the exception of Grocery Stores and General Merchandise Stores, Home Service was the most stable category through the peak of the pandemic. It has also recovered very well through June and Q3 compared to others such as Clothing Stores and Restaurants.4

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • Home Service was the most stable category aside from Grocery Stores and General Merchandise Stores through COVID-19
  • Consumer spending on Home Service has returned to pre-pandemic levels
Revenue Comparison YoY

As we look deeper into Q3 2020, it’s clear that Home Service businesses continued to recover well as states across the country re-opened their economies this past quarter. Grocery stores had seen unprecedented growth early on during the pandemic, but have since normalized considerably. The Automotive category has been very volatile as it declined drastically in March and April, followed by a quick recovery, and now impressive growth in September. Restaurants and Clothing stores have recovered relatively speaking, but still continue to struggle this past quarter.4

Category Comparison YoY (Q3 2020)

Consumer Spending

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has been used to evaluate consumer spending in these different categories. Although there’s no specific expenditure type that directly aligns with Home Service spending as a whole; Furnishings, household equipment, and routine household maintenance is a category that can be used as a proxy.

As seen below, all expenditure types were seeing positive growth early in the year. Similar to revenue growth, there was significant volatility in consumer demand in March, as we saw spending increase suddenly in Food and Beverage, which is directly correlated with Grocery store sales. This is indicative of behaviors seen during the lockdown as people stockpiled on items early on, but then this type of spending stabilized in April and May. 

On the other hand, there was a sudden decrease in spending on items such as Clothing and footwear and Food services and accommodations, which is directly related to Apparel sales and Restaurants / Hotels. As a lot of these businesses shut down in many states in April, this dynamic is to be expected. Even Healthcare, which is non-discretionary in nature, took a big dip in April as outpatient services such as physicians, dentists, and paramedical services either shut down or saw reduced business. All of these expenditure types saw significant recovery in May and June as the economy started to re-open throughout the country. In July and August, these expenditure types were still improving but at a slower pace. They have started to plateau while still seeing negative growth year-over-year. September data will not be available until the end of October.Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance did see a slowdown in March, followed by a sharper decline in April; but it also recovered quickly in May and June, back towards positive year-over-year growth in consumer spending. This is directly correlated with how the Home Service category has performed over the past two quarters, and is indicative of the non-discretionary nature of work that many home service businesses provide. This positive story has continued this past quarter, with July and August seeing positive growth year-over-year. Consumer spending is now right back to where it was before the pandemic.6

Consumer Spending Comparison YoY

Employment

As explained earlier, the NAICS categories of Services to Buildings and Dwellings and Specialty Trade Contractors make up a significant portion of businesses within the Home Service category. 

Similar to revenue growth, employment across all categories, with the exception of Food and Beverage Stores, dropped sharply in April. This directly correlates with Grocery Store sales, which have stayed strong throughout the pandemic. On the other hand, Clothing stores were impacted the most as their retail locations were completely shut down in many states. In the case of Restaurants, many of them continued to operate with fewer employees as they saw an increase in their take out sales while in-person dining was shut down. All of these categories that were hit hard in April saw great recovery in May and June, followed by a relatively flat quarter from July to September.

Home Service has been more resilient in comparison to most other categories as many services provided by these businesses tend to be non-discretionary, such as plumbing or pest control. There’s also a significant amount of work that can be done externally in industries such as lawn care and landscaping. After a moderate decline in employment in April, there has been a significant improvement in May and June as the economy has started to re-open across the country. Similar to other categories, last quarter has been relatively flat for Home Service as well. As the economy slowly recovers and businesses figure out their new normal, employment is likely to see slow recovery as most businesses will try to keep their expenses low in these uncertain times. 3

Employment Comparison YoY

TOUCHLESS PAYMENTS & CONSUMER INTERACTION

The COVID-19 pandemic forced all businesses to change how they worked as they evolved to keep up with changing customer behaviour and expectations. As governments and health organizations suggested social distancing, businesses had to figure out how to provide quotes, schedule and do work, and get paid in this new touchless world. Technology has become more important than ever during this time, and two trends really stand out in our data; a rise in electronic payments (e-payments), and the demand for improved communication with customers.

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • Since the beginning of COVID-19, e-payments as a percentage of total payment collection has grown 5%
  • Client communication was up well over 50% YoY in April and May, even though Cleaning and Contracting saw no growth in the number of client visits

E-Payment Growth

Based on a report from Bain & Company, the adoption of digital payments has accelerated significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the estimated percentage of transaction values done digitally in 2025 is now expected to be 67% rather than the previous estimate of 57%. 5 Although the Home Service category has been slower to adopt this trend compared to others, the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing rules that come with it have provided some tailwinds.

The data shows a rapid change in the market with a huge increase in payments being collected through e-payments rather than other payment methods such as cheque, cash or ACH. From January to May 2020, the payment share for e-payments grew from 32% to 37%, a lot of which can be attributed to social distancing measures that came into effect earlier this year. The increase has sustained over the following months and service providers are increasingly offering e-payment options to their customers. Based on the results we’ve seen so far, we believe the trend will continue throughout the duration of Q4 and into 2021.

Each business within Home Service has its own unique dynamics related to e-payment usage. Some businesses like the immediate liquidity of cash, and others prefer to take cheques for a large job so they don’t have to pay a large amount in credit card transaction fees. The Cleaning segment has seen great traction with e-payments historically, and continues to grow well through 2020. The Green and Contracting segments have historically been a bit slow to adopt  e-payments as they can often have large invoice sizes, however, they both saw a large increase in e-payment adoption through the pandemic.

E-payments as % of Total Payments Collected

Customer Communications

Customer communication is an integral part of any Home Service business’ success as every part of their workflow; quoting, schedule and doing work, invoicing and getting paid; is made up of back-and-forth communication between the business and its customers.

As the economy slowed down during the pandemic, Home Service businesses in the Cleaning and Contracting segments saw no growth in visits to customer sites year-over-year in April and May. However, even during that time, there was over 50% growth year-over-year in visit reminders being sent by those same businesses, as customer communication was more important than ever.

This communication trend has remained strong throughout 2020, and continues to look very positive in Q3. In September, all three segments within Home Service saw around 40% growth year-over-year in customer visits, while seeing over 150% growth year-over-year in visit reminders.

YoY Visits & Visit Reminders
YoY Growth in Visits

YoY Growth in Visit Reminders

Home Service Segment Breakdown

Since the Home Service category consists of a large range of businesses, it’s helpful to segment the data to better understand trends within different sections of this category. We split the data into three segments: Cleaning, Contracting, and Green businesses.

CLEANING

The Cleaning segment consists of industries such as residential and commercial cleaning, window washing, and pressure washing. These businesses are typically non-seasonal, but they do see a small spike for spring cleaning. Businesses in this segment experienced the most significant decline when stay-at-home directives were issued.

Although this segment started off strong at the start of the year, new work declined earlier than in the other segments when stay-at-home detectives were issued. In April, new work declined to -33% year-over-year, with revenues in the month following suit. In June, new work reached January and February levels, but declined again in July. Since then, growth in new work scheduled has been slower, reaching 5% year-over-year growth in September.

Revenue in Cleaning saw a significant decline between February and April, dropping from a 19% increase year-over-year to a decline of -37% year-over-year. Revenue growth improved significantly in June, when it was flat compared to the previous year, and all of Q3 showed a slow improvement to 3% year-over-year growth.

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • In the Cleaning segment, revenue saw a significant decline in April and May and flattened out by Q3 YoY
  • New work scheduled and revenue are back to positive YoY growth in September
  • Contract work in residential cleaning started strong in January but declined near the end of Q1, grew to a record high in June to slowed growth in Q3 YoY

New Work Scheduled YoY – Cleaning
New Work Scheduled YOY - Cleaning Graph
Median Revenue YoY – Cleaning
Median Revenue YOY - Cleaning Graph

The Cleaning segment has a lot of residential and commercial cleaning businesses with a high proportion of contract jobs that are regular, recurring, multi-month contracts. These contracts provide a high level of stability in revenue and visibility into the future. While some businesses saw the frequency of work increase within their contracts as sanitization became more important than ever, many contracts have also been cancelled as many commercial properties shut down and private residents started to do this work themselves. As a result, contract jobs in Residential Cleaning saw a major decline from February onwards, and hit a decline of -55% year-over-year in April. This work recovered well in Q2, with growth in Q3 slowing down but still remaining positive compared to last year.

One-off jobs have been trending positively in 2019, and started 2020 with positive growth as well, with growth outpacing contract jobs during that time. Similar to contract jobs though, one-off jobs declined quickly in March and April, and reached a similar floor in terms of year-over-year decline. There was a recovery in one-off jobs in May and June, though this recovery has been slower than contract jobs. In Q3, this recovery continued with one-off jobs finally seeing positive year-over-year growth of 3.3% in September.

YoY – One-off Jobs vs. Contract Jobs – Residential Cleaning (2020)

CONTRACTING

The Contracting segment consists of industries such as construction, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. Professionals in the Contracting segment require specialization and licensing in many geographies. Although they generally do fewer jobs, revenue from each job is much higher on average compared to Cleaning and Green. Several industries in Contracting are designated as essential throughout the U.S, allowing many businesses to endure the economic hardships of the pandemic better than most.

Similar to the Cleaning segment, Contracting saw a steep decline in new work being scheduled when the stay-at-home orders came into effect, declining in April by -23% year-over-year. This impacted revenues across April and May where growth fell to -15% year-over-year, roughly 25% below where they were expected to be.

New work being scheduled reached a record high of 15% year-over-year growth in June. In July, though this growth slowed down, the segment is still performing better than pre-COVID levels, and by September, reached 9% growth year-over-year. Revenue growth in Q3 slowed down at the start, but reached 12% growth year-over-year in September, matching pre-COVID levels.

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • In the Contracting segment, revenue growth was stable across all quarters aside from April and May where revenue declined YoY
  • New work scheduled has fully recovered from the lows of April, and is showing consistent positive growth YoY from June onwards
  • Warranty services was the most stable type of work in 2020, even though it still saw declines from March to May YoY
  • Inspection has been the most volatile but seems to be recovering well after flat or negative growth YoY all year long
New Work Scheduled YoY – Contracting
New Work Scheduled YOY - Contracting Graph
Median Revenue YoY – Contracting
Median Revenue YOY - Contracting Graph

The Contracting segment is dominated by one-off jobs of typically higher invoice values. The nature of the line items on the invoices gives us some insight into the type of work being performed by these service providers. The types of work have been categorized and visualized below. 7

All work types show similar trends from the start of the year; showing modest growth in Q1, a sharp decline in Q2, and a recovery in Q3. Warranty services stand out as one work type which didn’t decline quite as much as the others, as this is work these businesses have previously committed to doing. It is the least volatile.

On the other hand, the inspection/consultation work type is the most volatile as it relates to new projects being started. In the middle of the pandemic, this declined significantly to -19% year-over-year in April. Since then, it has been consistently improving, especially in Q3, and shows a strong path of recovery after growing 5.7% year-over-year in September. 

Labor/material and regular repair/maintenance work moved in sync and are showing a modest trend towards recovery. However, they have not been able to get back to positive growth year-over-year, or pre-COVID levels.

YoY – Type of Work Performed – Contracting

GREEN

The Green segment is made up of industries such as lawn care, landscaping, and other related outdoor services. These businesses are often seasonal, and perform a lot of their work in the spring season. While some industries within Green have low barriers to entry similar to residential cleaning, services such as tree care require specialization and have tight regulations. 

The ‘essential’ classification of Green businesses varied by state when stay-at-home orders were given, but generally this segment fared relatively better during the pandemic as most of their work tends to be outdoors.

The year started off slow but reached healthy growth in new work being scheduled in February and March, before dropping to -7% year-over-year in April. This resulted in revenue growth falling from an average of around 10% year-over-year earlier in the year to flat revenue growth in April and May.

June saw a record high of 27% growth year-over-year in new work scheduled, which slowed down slightly in Q3 but still remained very positive. Revenue growth in Green returned to pre-COVID levels in June with 10% growth year-over-year, and remained positive throughout Q3 as well.

SECTION TAKEAWAYS
  • Unlike Cleaning and Contracting, Green saw positive growth YoY across all quarters, except for April where new work scheduled declined
  • In Q3, Green has returned to near pre-COVID YoY growth
  • Regular recurring jobs were significantly impacted during the peak of COVID-19 but have recovered with September seeing nearly 20% growth YoY
  • One-off jobs have been essentially not impacted at all aside from a minor decline in April YoY
New Work Scheduled YoY – Green
New Work Scheduled YOY - Green
Median Revenue YoY – Green
Median Revenue YOY - Green Graph

Similar to the Cleaning segment, many Green businesses have a high proportion of contract jobs that are regular, recurring, multi-month contracts. Unlike Residential Cleaning, Lawn Care and Lawn Maintenance businesses saw very little impact to the performance of one-off jobs. There was a slight decline in April, but otherwise one-off jobs have seen positive year-over-year growth throughout 2020. 

However, contract jobs have been significantly impacted. After seeing some strong positive growth in Q1, they declined to -18.5% year-over-year in April, and saw slow recovery in May and June. The recovery has been much faster in Q3, with flat growth in August, and September actually seeing nearly 20% growth year-over-year.

YOY – One-off Jobs vs. Contract Jobs – Lawn Care and Lawn Maintenance (2020)

Future Outlook

2020 has been a tumultuous year for most major categories—Home Service included. Record declines in new work scheduled and revenues, particularly in April, were followed by record high growth in June. Although many indicators suggest that the Home Service category has made nearly a complete recovery, the future is heavily tied to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic. 

As of today, it’s clear that Home Service as a category is incredibly resilient as most businesses managed to survive through unprecedented economic hardship. Analyzing measures such as consumer demand, employment, and revenues illustrates a remarkable recovery across all segments.

Although there has been a positive economic turnaround for all categories towards the end of Q2 and through Q3, it’s difficult to predict where we are going with the recent rise in COVID-19 cases throughout the country. While consumer spending and employment have recovered from the massive declines they saw in early Q2, they seem to be stagnating a bit below their pre-COVID growth levels, suggesting that both consumers and businesses are remaining cautious.

Data Sources & Methodology

  1. The small business data provided is from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. The specific metrics shared are from a Research Summary published by the organization as well as an annual FAQ they provide.
  2. Unemployment rates are extracted from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’s new release.
  3. The employment growth metrics are provided from FRED Economic Data, who sourced their data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We combined employment statistics for’ Services to Buildings and Dwellings’ under “Professional and Business Services” with Specialty Trade Contractors under “Construction” to create an equivalent for the Home Service category.
  4. All category data outside of Home Service comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s advance monthly retail trade report. The year-over-year change in Median Revenue has been used as a proxy for the Home Service category data point, which is the Home Service equivalent to ‘same-store sales growth’. As a result, we believe this to be a conservative estimate for the category as a whole because it doesn’t include new business starts, while the U.S. Census Bureau’s trade report includes all sales from new business starts as well as same-store sales.
  1. Data on projected percentage of digital payments in 2025 is from the report The Covid-19 Tipping Point for Digital Payments, published by Bain & Company on April 29, 2020
  1. The consumer spending data is sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The year-over-year change in consumer spending is calculated from personal consumption expenditure data published on the website. 
  1. *Keywords for grouping line items:
    • Labor/material: line items contain ‘labor’ or ‘material’
    • Work/repair/maintenance: line items contain ‘repair’, ‘maintenance’, ‘treatment’, ‘plumb’, ‘wall’, ‘ceiling’, ‘carpet’, or ‘window’
    • Warranty services: line items contain ‘warranty’ or ‘guarantee’
    • Others: everything else

Home Service eCONOMIC Report
SUMMER EDITION

ALL REPORTS

HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
February 2024
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
November 2022
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
May 2022
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
February 2022
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
November 2021
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
August 2021
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
January 2021
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
October 2020
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
July 2020
Read Report
HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT
May 2020
Read Report