What it costs
We do not publish a rate card, because a rate card would be a guess about your building. What we can do is show you the arithmetic underneath every quote you will receive, so you can tell a real number from an optimistic one.
Start here
Cleaning is a labor business. Supplies, equipment and insurance matter, but the overwhelming majority of what you pay is somebody’s time — which means the arithmetic starts with what an hour of that time costs a compliant employer in New Jersey.
The state minimum wage is $15.92as of 2026, and rises every January. Experienced night cleaning in Bergen County pays above that. On top of the wage, an employer carries Social Security and Medicare, federal and state unemployment, New Jersey temporary disability and family leave, workforce development, workers’ compensation at the janitorial class rate, and mandatory earned sick leave accrued at one hour per thirty worked.
Stacked together, those add roughly 20 percent on top of the wage. So a cleaner paid $19 an hour costs their employer somewhere near $23 an hour before a single bottle of chemical, a vacuum, a certificate of insurance, a supervisor’s time or one dollar of profit.
That number is the floor under every honest quote in this state. When a bid comes in far beneath what that arithmetic allows, something in it is not true — and the most common candidate is the employment status of whoever will be in your building.
The variables
Two buildings of identical square footage can price 60 percent apart, and none of the reasons are mysterious.
A 200,000 sq ft distribution building might hold 6,000 sq ft of office and break area that drives nearly all the recurring labor. A quote priced off the building footprint rather than the space that actually gets cleaned is wrong in whichever direction happens to suit the person quoting it.
Five nights a week is not five times the cost of once a week — soil load and setup time do not scale linearly. But it is the single largest lever on your monthly number, and the first thing to revisit if a quote comes back higher than expected.
Restrooms consume labor out of all proportion to their floor area. Two fixtures in a small suite is a different job from twelve in a building running three shifts. Fixture count and headcount matter more here than square footage does.
Carpet, VCT, LVT, sheet vinyl, polished concrete and sealed stone each want different equipment, different chemistry, and different periodic cycles. A building with waxed VCT carries a strip-and-refinish obligation that a carpeted building simply does not.
Medical and dental suites cost more per square foot than general office, and they should — trained staff, dedicated equipment per zone, documented procedures and disinfectant dwell times are real recurring costs. A clinical space quoted at general office rates is a space where none of that is happening.
A building we can enter at 6pm and work continuously costs less than one with a security desk, a badge process, a 9pm start, and areas that must be cleaned around occupants. Distribution buildings scheduled into a shift-change gap are cheaper than ones demanding a fixed window.
Paper towels, toilet tissue, hand soap and can liners typically run 5 to 9 percent of a janitorial contract's value. Whether they are in your number or bought separately is the most common reason two quotes appear to differ when they do not.
The ranges, honestly
Industry sources commonly cite recurring office janitorial in the region of $0.09 to $0.17 per square foot per month. That band is genuinely useful for orientation and genuinely misleading as a quote, for two reasons.
First, it is built on national labor costs. New Jersey wages sit meaningfully above the national average, so a compliant North Jersey contractor generally prices above that band — and a local quote landing at the bottom of it deserves a question about how.
Second, per-square-foot figures assume a general office at a stated frequency. They do not describe a medical suite, a warehouse where 3 percent of the footprint carries 90 percent of the labor, a building with twelve restrooms, or a space with waxed VCT that needs stripping twice a year. In each of those cases the per-square-foot figure is not slightly off. It is the wrong unit.
Which is why we quote from a walkthrough. Not as a sales tactic — because measuring the space, counting the fixtures and identifying the floors is the only way to produce a number that still holds in month nine.
How a real bid is built
Not the lease square footage. The space that actually gets cleaned, broken out by type — open office, private offices, restrooms, break room, corridors, warehouse floor.
Each task and surface has a realistic production rate. Open office vacuums quickly; restrooms and break rooms do not. Applied across the scope, this produces the crew-hours per visit — the actual quantity being bought.
Hours multiplied by the true employer cost per hour, plus supplies, equipment, vehicle, insurance, supervision and administration. This is the cost of serving the building. A contractor who cannot decompose their number this way did not build it this way.
Margin has to cover the account going wrong — a callout, a re-clean, an equipment failure. New Jersey sales tax at 6.625% is added and shown separately, never folded into the rate.
Comparing bids
Cleaning services are taxable in New Jersey at 6.625%. A quote that does not show it either has not accounted for it — in which case the real number is 6.625% higher — or is not collecting it, which is its own problem. It should appear as its own line.
This is the biggest single driver of a suspiciously low number. Payroll taxes, workers' compensation and earned sick leave add roughly 20% on top of wages. A contractor avoiding those can underbid a compliant one substantially — and under New Jersey's ABC test, the unpaid liability has a way of reaching the property owner.
"Weekly cleaning" is not a scope. Vacuuming weekly and restrooms daily is a different price from both weekly. Without a task-and-frequency schedule attached, two quotes cannot be compared at all, and there is nothing to point at when something is missed.
New Jersey's minimum wage rises every January. A twelve-month contract with no escalation provision either absorbs that or was priced expecting to. Ask which.
Our answers to all four are on the credentials page, with the documentation behind each.
Questions
Industry figures for recurring office janitorial are commonly cited in the range of roughly $0.09 to $0.17 per square foot per month, but those are national numbers built on national wages. New Jersey labor costs sit well above the national average, so realistic North Jersey pricing generally runs above that band. The honest answer is that square footage alone does not determine the number — frequency, restroom count, floor types and access change it more than area does.
Rates are usually quoted as a monthly figure rather than hourly, but the underlying arithmetic is hourly. New Jersey's minimum wage is $15.92 as of 2026 and the market rate for experienced night cleaning in Bergen County runs above it. Once employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation and mandatory earned sick leave are added, the loaded cost of an employee is roughly 20% above their wage — before any supplies, equipment, insurance, supervision or margin.
Almost always one of four reasons: the cleaners are paid cash or as 1099 contractors rather than employees; the frequency or scope is lower than you assumed; consumables are excluded; or sales tax has not been accounted for. Ask each bidder to state their crew classification and attach a task-and-frequency schedule, and most of the apparent difference resolves.
We can give you a realistic range over the phone if you know your cleanable square footage, restroom fixture count, floor types and the frequency you want. We will not give you a firm monthly number without walking it, because a firm number produced from a floor plan is a guess that gets corrected later — usually upward, or by quietly reducing what actually gets done.
Yes, and a quote that says otherwise should worry you. Bloodborne pathogen training, dedicated equipment per zone, EPA-registered disinfectants held to their labeled contact time, and per-visit documentation are recurring costs. A clinical suite priced at general office rates is a suite where those things are not happening.
Not per square foot at office rates. Production rates on post-construction work collapse compared with routine cleaning, because drywall dust bonds to surfaces, adhesive and grout haze need dwell time and agitation, and stickers come off one at a time. It is quoted from estimated crew-hours after a walkthrough, and two buildings of identical size can differ by a factor of three.
By building type: offices across Bergen County, warehouses and distribution centers, medical and dental suites, and post-construction.
Thirty minutes in your building and you get a written scope and a fixed monthly figure — with the labor hours behind it shown, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. Call (201) 663-8828.
