Cleaners in South Florida are sweeping up the cash.
Housekeepers in South Florida are making about $150,000 a year as the influx of new, rich residents has created bidding wars for high-end cleaners, staffing companies told NBC News.
“I have been placing staff for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said April Berube, founder of the Wellington Agency, which places household staff in the Sunshine State, New York and other locations.
“We’ve seen such a boom from people relocating, especially Palm Beach and Miami.”
In recent years, Florida has been flooded with new residents from New York and other high-tax states rushing to take advantage of the state having no individual income tax.
More than 91,000 New Yorkers left the Empire State in 2022 alone to relocate to Florida, according to Census Bureau data.
And now that the houses have been filled, they need to be cleaned.
“For housekeepers it’s wonderful,” Berube said. “For us, it’s extremely difficult. It’s a severe shortage.”
Mansions, hotels, resorts and businesses are all competing for cleaning staff shooting up the prices for these positions.
Pay for housekeepers has rocketed from about $25 an hour in 2020 to $45 or $50 an hour today, according to some agencies.
In Palm Beach, housekeepers with experience in wealthy homes are typically making between $120,000 and $150,000 a year, along with 401(k) plans, health care and other benefits, including overtime.
Melissa Psitos, the founder of Lily Pond Services, told NBC News that she recently had a client in the area hire a head housekeeper for $250,000 a year, including overtime, and the worker travels with the family to their other homes.
“At first they’re in shock, and they say, ‘No way I’m paying that,’” Berube explained. “It’s even uncomfortable for me to give them the numbers. But when they try to hire someone for less, with less experience, they almost always come back to us and say, ‘I learned my lesson. We are willing to pay for the experience.’”
She noted that housekeepers of this caliber need specific tools and skills, such as moving quietly and unnoticed and knowing how to carefully clean antiques, which makes the hiring pool much smaller than the demand.
“There is just not enough supply,” she said.
