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Workers' comp insurance for cleaning crews
Workers' comp for a cleaning business pays an injured crew member's medical care and part of their lost wages, and in many of our states it's required from the first hire. For janitorial companies, the tricky parts are part-time night payroll, steady turnover, cleaners paid on 1099s and state rules that shift with every state your crews work in.
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What workers comp for a cleaning business pays for
Comp is the policy for injuries to your own staff while they work. For a cleaning company, that's a night cleaner, a day porter, a floor tech or a route supervisor injured inside a client's building or on the drive between two of them.
State law sets the benefits. California's comp agency lists them as medical care, temporary and permanent disability benefits, supplemental job displacement benefits, a return-to-work supplement and death benefits. Other states use their own names and formulas.
A standard comp policy comes in two parts. Part One pays the benefits your state requires. Part Two, employer's liability, typically defends you when a crew member's injury turns into a lawsuit outside the comp system. A common version: your employee sues the building owner, who then pulls your company into the case.
The injuries a cleaning route produces
Cleaning is physical, repetitive and often done alone after hours. The claims follow the tasks:
- Slips on your own wet floors. The crew that just mopped or stripped a corridor is the crew most likely to fall on it.
- Lifting, pushing and pulling. Overloaded trash and recycling pulls, moving a conference table to vacuum, steering a walk-behind scrubber up a ramp.
- Chemical injuries. OSHA and NIOSH note that cleaning chemicals can cause skin rashes and burns, eye and lung irritation and asthma, and that mixing bleach with ammonia can cause severe lung damage or death.
- Sharps. A needle hidden in a restroom trash liner becomes a comp claim the moment it sticks one of your people.
Bloodborne pathogens come up often in underwriting. OSHA's interpretation letters say the agency doesn't generally consider janitorial and housekeeping staff in non-healthcare buildings to have occupational exposure under its Bloodborne Pathogens Standard. It can still find exposure case by case, and the employer decides which jobs or tasks involve it. Clinics and medical offices change that picture. We don't give OSHA advice, but our guide to cleaning chemicals, OSHA rules and liability explains where the rules sit, and the medical facility cleaning page covers clinic accounts.
| Usually paid by comp | Usually outside comp |
|---|---|
| Medical care for a work injury or work-related illness | Injuries to tenants, visitors or the public, which belong to general liability |
| Part of a crew member's lost wages while they recover | Damage to a client's floors, furniture or equipment |
| Permanent disability and death benefits as state law sets them | Owners or officers who have opted out under their state's rules |
| Employer's liability for some injury lawsuits outside comp | Harassment or wrongful-firing claims from employees |
| Part-time, seasonal and fill-in workers on your payroll | Ohio benefits, which come from the state fund (BWC) unless an employer qualifies to self-insure |
How comp claims start for cleaning crews
Example scenario: the overloaded recycling bag
At 1:15 a.m., a cleaner on a three-person crew at a manufacturer's front office drags a recycling bag twice its normal weight out to the dumpster. Something gives in her lower back. She misses three weeks and needs physical therapy. Her treatment and part of her wages for those weeks would typically be paid under your comp policy, and the fill-in you hire to cover her shifts adds to the payroll you report.
Example scenario: the needle in the liner
A cleaner servicing a 24-hour fitness center at 11 p.m. presses down a full restroom trash liner and feels a jab. Someone had thrown away a syringe. Testing and follow-up care after a needlestick to your employee are handled as a workers' comp claim.
Example scenario: the loose threshold
On a Saturday morning, your floor tech is burnishing a bank branch lobby when a loose metal threshold the landlord never fixed catches his foot. He collects comp benefits, then sues the landlord. The landlord's lawyer points to the indemnity clause in your contract and sends the claim to you. Employer's liability, the second part of your comp policy, may respond to that kind of claim, depending on its exclusions and your contract wording.
What sets the price of comp for cleaning crews
Comp is priced on wages, not heads. Each group of workers sits in a class code, and each code has a rate per $100 of payroll. In states that use NCCI's system, cleaning crews are usually rated under Code 9014, "Janitorial Services by Contractors – No Window Cleaning Above Ground Level & Drivers." Drivers are included in that class.
A few states run their own bureaus with their own numbers. Pennsylvania's bureau places commercial janitorial contractors in Code 0971, Commercial Buildings. California's bureau uses 9008, Janitorial Services – by contractors. New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina also have their own bureaus, and we confirm the code with the carrier before quoting there.
To see the scale, take one state's public numbers. Indiana's advisory rate for 9014, approved for January 1, 2026, is $1.203 per $100 of payroll, so $100,000 of crew wages works out to about $1,203 before your experience mod and the carrier's own pricing. The same filing lists a $539 minimum premium for the class. For policies starting January 1, 2027, Indiana has approved $1.178 and a $531 minimum.
Because the rate applies to wages, 30 part-timers working 15 hours a week cost about the same as 12 full-timers at the same hourly pay. Turnover matters in another way: wins, losses and replacement hires move your payroll all year, and the year-end audit settles the difference. Our guide to janitorial class codes and comp audits covers audits, 1099 cleaners and subbed-out crews in detail.
| Source | Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| One online insurance marketplace (updated October 2026) | $114/month ($1,364/year) | Based on the median policy for its cleaning-business customers, most with fewer than five employees |
| One online insurer (data updated October 2026) | $126/month | Median for its janitorial customers |
| Another online seller (updated September 2026) | $89/month ($1,068/year) | Median for its janitor customers' policies bought July to December 2024 |
These sellers' customers skew toward very small cleaning businesses, so a 40-person janitorial contractor should expect to pay far more. Your price depends on the payroll in each class code, your annual sales, the kinds of buildings you clean, how much specialty and chemical work you do, the vehicles your crews drive, your claims history and the limits your contracts require. The cleaning insurance cost guide puts comp next to the other policies in a typical bid.
Which cleaning companies need comp first
Your first W-2 hire. In many of our states, one employee is enough to require comp. Others draw the line at three or four employees, and Texas lets private employers choose whether to carry it at all.
Contractors bidding public and campus work. Public janitorial solicitations ask for statutory comp plus employer's liability at stated limits. One Texas college's 2026 RFP wanted $500,000 per accident, per disease and per employee, from subcontractors too. Our school cleaning insurance page covers district and campus contracts.
Office contractors working for property managers. Property managers' insurance exhibits usually list comp with employer's liability. See office cleaning insurance for the rest of that stack.
Companies that sub out buildings. If another crew covers some of your accounts and can't prove its own comp, its injuries and payroll can land on you, depending on your state.
State rules that change your comp
Ohio. Every private employer that doesn't qualify to self-insure gets comp from the state insurance fund, run by the Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC). Employer's liability is bought privately as stop-gap coverage, so Ohio cleaning companies typically add it as an endorsement to their general liability. See the Ohio commercial cleaning insurance page.
Texas. Private employers may skip comp and become non-subscribers. An injured worker can then sue, and the company can't defend by blaming the worker's own negligence, a coworker's negligence or an assumed risk. Public exhibits often require comp anyway. See the Texas commercial cleaning insurance page.
Georgia and Florida. Georgia requires comp at three or more regular employees, and officers and LLC members are included in that count of three, even when they sign waivers for themselves. Florida draws its line at four employees for non-construction work, which includes janitorial service, and also counts officers and members unless they've filed an exemption with the state. See the Georgia commercial cleaning insurance page.
Pennsylvania. Coverage is required even for limited part-time hours, and an uninsured employer can be criminally charged for each day it goes without coverage. See the Pennsylvania commercial cleaning insurance page.
Indiana. A company that sublets work to a crew without getting the state board's certificate of that crew's comp can be liable for the crew's injured workers. See the Indiana commercial cleaning insurance page.
Related coverage
Workers' comp questions from cleaning company owners
Do I need workers' comp if all my cleaners are part-time?
Does workers' comp cover a cleaner hurt by cleaning chemicals?
Can I buy Ohio workers' comp through you?
Is workers' comp required for a one-person cleaning company?
What class code do cleaning companies use for workers' comp?
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