Janitor / Custodian Job Description: Duties, Responsibilities, Template & Pay (2026)
A janitor — custodian, in schools and public buildings, and the same occupation either way — keeps a building clean, safe and working, usually on a shift nobody else is in the building for. This page has a janitor job description template you can copy, the requirements that belong in it, what janitors and custodians are paid by sector, and why this role has one of the largest annual hiring needs of any occupation in the country.
Janitor or custodian? One job, two words, and a third that is a different occupation
Janitor and custodian are the same job. BLS classifies both as janitors and building cleaners. The word changes with the setting: schools, universities, hospitals and government buildings almost always say custodian; office buildings, retail and contract cleaning companies say janitor. Candidates search both, roughly evenly, and a posting that uses only one is advertising to half the market. Put one in the title and the other in the first two lines.
A housekeeper is not the same occupation. BLS separates maids and housekeeping cleaners — who clean private homes and hotel rooms — from janitors and building cleaners, who maintain institutional and commercial buildings. The work, the pay and the candidate pool are different. If you are staffing hotel rooms, use the housekeeper job description instead.
What a janitor actually does
The cleaning is the part everyone writes down. The rest of the job is what separates a posting that fills from one that does not.
The cleaning: floors — sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and the machine work of scrubbing, burnishing, stripping and refinishing — restrooms, trash and recycling, glass, dusting, high-touch surface disinfection, and the periodic deep work that happens over a break or a weekend.
The building: minor repairs and replacements, changing lamps and filters, unclogging drains, resetting breakers, moving furniture, setting up and breaking down rooms for events, snow and ice at the entrances, and reporting the things that need a trade.
The responsibility: in most buildings the janitor is the last person out, which makes them responsible for locking up, alarms, and noticing what is wrong at 10pm when nobody else is there. In schools and healthcare it also means bloodborne-pathogen protocols, chemical handling and safety compliance that are genuinely regulated.
Say which of those three your job is weighted toward. A contract cleaning route through four offices is a different job from a solo school custodian who also sets up the gym for a basketball game, and candidates know the difference even when postings pretend they do not.
Janitor / custodian job description template
Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and delete what does not apply. It is written for a single-building day or evening position; the customization section covers schools, healthcare, contract cleaning routes and industrial settings.
Job title
[Janitor / Custodian] — [Building or site], [Company name], [City, ST] — [Shift]
Summary
[Company name] is hiring a [janitor/custodian] for [building type and square footage] in [city]. The shift is [days], [start] to [end], [00] hours a week, [with the building occupied / after hours]. You will work [alone / with a team of [0]] and report to [role]. Pay is [$00.00–$00.00] an hour [plus a [$0.00] shift differential for nights], paid [weekly].
Responsibilities
- Clean and sanitise restrooms, including fixtures, floors and restocking supplies
- Sweep, mop, vacuum and machine-clean floors; operate [auto-scrubber, buffer, extractor] as trained
- Empty trash and recycling and move waste to [compactor / dumpster]
- Dust, wipe and disinfect high-touch surfaces, glass and entryways
- Complete the assigned cleaning route and checklist within the shift, and log it
- Handle chemicals per label and SDS, using the PPE provided
- Make minor repairs — lamps, filters, soap and towel dispensers — and report anything needing a trade
- Set up and break down [rooms, event spaces, furniture] as requested
- [Secure the building at the end of shift: lights, doors, alarm]
- [Clear snow and ice at entrances during winter weather]
Requirements
- Able to work the [shift] consistently and reliably — this role is judged mostly on turning up
- Able to lift [40] lbs, stand and walk for a full shift, and use stairs and ladders
- Able to follow written checklists and chemical labels in [English/Spanish]
- [Able to pass a background check — required for our [school / hospital / secure] site]
- [Valid driver's licence if travelling between sites]
Preferred
- Previous [commercial / school / healthcare / industrial] cleaning experience
- Floor-care machine experience [auto-scrubber, burnisher, extractor, stripping and waxing]
- [Bloodborne pathogen or OSHA training — we provide it if not]
- [Basic maintenance skills: plumbing, electrical, HVAC filters]
- [Spanish and English]
Pay and benefits
- [$00.00–$00.00] an hour, reviewed at [6] months, paid [weekly]
- [Night or weekend differential of [$0.00] an hour]
- [Health, dental and vision after [00] days], [401(k) with match]
- [Paid holidays and PTO], [uniforms and all equipment provided]
- [Paid training on floor-care equipment], [no on-call], [set schedule, same days every week]
How to apply
[Apply here / text CLEAN to 00000 / call [name] at [number]]. We reply to every application within [24] hours and you can see the building before you decide.
Requirements: what is required, what is preferred, and what costs you applicants
This occupation generates roughly 321,800 openings a year — one of the largest replacement needs in the US labour market. That means two things: you will be hiring again soon whatever you do, and any requirement that is not genuinely necessary is costing you candidates in a market where you are competing with every warehouse and retailer in town.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Experience | BLS lists no formal educational credential and short-term on-the-job training for this occupation. Requiring experience filters out the entire population of people entering it, which is most of your realistic pool. Ask for it as a preference and pay a higher starting rate for it. |
| High school diploma | Not required by the occupation and not necessary for the work. It is a line copied from a general HR template, and in this market it is expensive. |
| Background check | Legitimate and often mandatory in schools, healthcare and secure sites. Name it in the posting and say what it involves, because candidates who would pass often assume they will not. |
| Physical requirements | Concrete is fine and useful: lifting weight, full shift on your feet, stairs, ladders. It helps candidates self-select accurately rather than guessing. |
| Floor-care equipment | A real skill worth paying for — and an excellent preference line, because it tells an experienced cleaner that you know the difference between a mop and a burnisher. Do not make it a requirement unless the route is entirely machine work. |
| Language | Say what you actually need. If the checklists and SDS labels are bilingual, say that; a very large share of this workforce is bilingual and a posting that acknowledges it converts better. |
| Driver's licence | Only if the job involves driving between sites. On a single-building role it is a copied-in requirement that removes candidates for nothing. |
Custodian duties, written for a posting
The version that works names the building and the route. How many square feet, how many floors, how many restrooms, how many people in the building, and whether the work happens with the building occupied or empty. Those five facts tell an experienced cleaner exactly what the shift is, and almost no posting includes any of them.
Say whether there is a checklist and whether the work is inspected. Cleaners with standards want to hear that there are standards; the good ones have all worked somewhere the route was impossible and nobody looked.
Include the non-cleaning duties honestly. Event setup, snow, furniture moves, minor repairs, locking up — each of those is a normal part of the job and each is a common reason somebody quits in week three when it was not mentioned. Keep the list to eight or ten lines and order it by how much of the shift each one takes.
How to customize it by setting
Schools and universities
Use "custodian" in the title. Say the shift relative to the school day, whether the role works summers or is a ten-month position, and whether there is event and athletics setup. Background checks and fingerprinting are near-universal — name them. Public-sector benefits, a pension and a fixed calendar are the real advantages here and they belong near the top: government pays the highest median of any sector at $20.76 an hour.
Healthcare and senior living
Environmental services is its own discipline. Name the protocols — isolation rooms, terminal cleaning, bloodborne pathogens, chemical dwell times — and say you train and pay for it. Say whether the role is patient-facing, because for many candidates that is a reason to apply rather than a reason not to.
Contract cleaning and building services
This is 35% of the occupation. Be honest about the route: how many buildings, how far apart, who provides transport, and whether the hours are guaranteed. Part-time and split routes are normal in this segment and they are the main reason it loses people to warehousing. If you can guarantee hours, say the number.
Industrial, warehouse and manufacturing
Different work: production-area cleaning, machine surrounds, chemical and waste handling, sometimes a forklift or a scrubber licence. Pay usually reflects that, and the posting should say the environment plainly — noise, temperature, PPE.
Office and commercial buildings
Evening routes, tenant standards, security access and working alone. Say whether the building is occupied during the shift and what the access and alarm process is. The candidate who wants this job usually wants the quiet — do not hide it.
What it costs to reach janitors and custodians on social
There is no janitorial role family in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, so the honest references are the overall distribution and the nearest hourly comparisons. Across 891 managed campaigns the median cost per applicant was $13.88, with the cheapest decile at $2.91. Entry-level hourly work with no credential barrier sits at that cheap end: retail and corporate campaigns ran a $8.58 median at a 26% apply rate, the highest of any sector, and warehouse and production campaigns a $9.83 median at 20%.
A janitorial campaign should behave like those, and when it does not, the cause is almost always the application form rather than the audience. Across all 891 campaigns, campaigns converting over 20% of clicks paid a median $4.41 an applicant and those under 10% paid $53.77. For this role the form should be three questions: can you work these hours, can you lift and stand for a shift, and when can you start. Everything else belongs in the phone call you will make the same day.
Staffing a building rather than filling one vacancy? Frontline recruiting covers the hiring side, and the housekeeper job description is the right page if the work is hotel rooms or private homes rather than a commercial building.
Writing the ad version
The description is the document. The advertisement is read on a phone by somebody who may be working a warehouse shift today and would rather have a fixed schedule. Three facts decide it: the hourly rate, the exact shift, and whether the schedule is the same every week. Our campaign data puts the best-converting length at 201–400 words, and for this audience the shorter end works.
Write it in plain language, avoid "custodial services professional", and if a large share of your local workforce speaks Spanish, run the ad in both languages rather than adding "bilingual preferred" to an English one.
What janitors and custodians earn, by sector
The national median was $17.71 an hour, $36,840 a year in May 2025. The sector spread is about $3.55 an hour between the top and the bottom — and it runs against the volume, with the largest employer paying the least.
| Industry | Median hourly pay (May 2025) | Share of janitors employed |
|---|---|---|
| Government (excluding education and hospitals) | $20.76 | 5% |
| Educational services | $18.63 | 17% |
| Healthcare and social assistance | $18.35 | 7% |
| Services to buildings and dwellings | $17.21 | 35% |
| Self-employed | — | 5% |
For a contract cleaning company, that table is the competitive picture: a school district pays roughly $1.42 an hour more and a municipal building $3.55 more, for work that is usually lighter and on a fixed calendar. What a contractor can compete with is speed of hire, guaranteed hours and a route that does not change every week.
Employment is projected to grow only 2% between 2025 and 2035, but the occupation still generates about 321,800 openings a year — essentially all replacement. That is the defining fact of janitorial hiring: the work is not disappearing, the people are always moving, and the employers who staff reliably are the ones who treat recruiting as a permanent, low-cost, always-on activity rather than a response to a resignation.
Frequently asked questions
What does a janitor do?
A janitor cleans and sanitises restrooms, sweeps, mops, vacuums and machine-cleans floors, empties trash and recycling, dusts and disinfects surfaces, restocks supplies, handles cleaning chemicals safely, makes minor repairs such as lamps and filters, sets up and breaks down rooms, and often secures the building at the end of the shift.
Is a janitor the same as a custodian?
Yes. BLS classifies both as janitors and building cleaners; the word changes with the setting. Schools, universities, hospitals and government buildings usually say custodian, while offices, retail and contract cleaning companies say janitor. Because candidates search both terms, a posting should carry one in the title and the other in the opening lines.
What is the difference between a janitor and a housekeeper?
They are separate occupations. Janitors and building cleaners maintain commercial and institutional buildings; maids and housekeeping cleaners clean private homes and hotel rooms. The work, the pay and the candidate pool differ, so the two should never be advertised in one posting.
How much do janitors and custodians make?
The national median was $17.71 an hour, or $36,840 a year, in May 2025 (BLS). By sector, government pays a median of $20.76 an hour, educational services $18.63, healthcare and social assistance $18.35, and services to buildings and dwellings — which employs 35% of janitors — $17.21.
What qualifications does a janitor need?
BLS lists no formal educational credential and short-term on-the-job training as typical. In practice employers need reliability, the physical capacity for a full shift on their feet, and the ability to follow chemical labels and a checklist. Background checks are standard in schools, healthcare and secure sites, and floor-care machine experience is worth paying more for.
What should a janitor job description include?
The building type and square footage, the number of floors and restrooms, the exact shift and whether it is the same every week, whether the work happens with the building occupied, whether the person works alone, an hourly rate with any differential, eight to ten responsibilities including the non-cleaning duties, the physical requirements, and a clear way to apply.
What are a custodian's duties in a school?
The cleaning route plus the building: classroom and restroom cleaning, floor care including summer stripping and refinishing, trash and recycling, minor repairs, setting up and breaking down rooms for events and athletics, snow and ice clearance at entrances, and securing the building. School custodian roles almost always require a background check and are often built around the school calendar.
Why is it hard to hire janitors?
Because the occupation needs about 321,800 replacements a year and competes directly with warehouse, retail and food service for the same hourly workers, usually at a similar rate. The advantage janitorial work has, and the one most postings forget to state, is schedule: a fixed shift on the same days every week is something most of the competing jobs cannot offer.
Hiring the person who runs the cleaning team rather than joins it? The housekeeping supervisor job description covers the supervisory role — a median $23.61 an hour against $17.71 on the floor, which is one of the largest step-ups available to a frontline worker without a credential.
Losing cleaning staff to route work? The sanitation worker job description covers refuse and recycling collection at a $23.89 median against $17.71 for janitorial work — worth knowing what your people are being recruited into.
Other job description templates
Hiring janitors and custodians?
The description is the document. Filling a shift every time somebody moves on is the job. That is what we run.
Pay, employment and outlook figures: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Janitors and Building Cleaners (May 2025 wage data, 2025–35 projections). Cost-per-applicant and apply-rate figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, 891 campaigns and 1,334 campaign-months.