Hiring Race Check: What Landscape Labor Surveys Say

Are landscape contractors really planning to hire field crews?

Yes, according to the Green Industry Pros article. More than half of the landscape contractors it surveyed planned to add field workers and crew leaders over the next two years, and about a third said that was a possibility.

Those are plans, not completed hires, and the article's publication date was not visible in the search results we reviewed. The figures describe the mood of a segment. They do not tell you how many people your crew needs next spring or which roles will open first.

What the Green Industry Pros figures measure

The article reports that 42% of respondents found recruiting and keeping field workers harder than before, and 59% said the same about crew leaders. The higher crew-lead figure suggests the squeeze reaches supervision, not only entry-level field roles.

We could not confirm the sample size or survey sponsor from the excerpt we reviewed. Treat every percentage as secondhand until someone opens the full article, reads its methods note and confirms the date. Pay bands by role appear in the article as well, but we have left them out because we did not verify them in this review.

What the Aspire survey covers, and who commissioned it

Aspire, a software vendor, commissioned the research, and Thrive Analytics ran it. The sample was 1,015 commercial landscape contractors across regions, revenue tiers and business maturity levels, with fieldwork from May 2 to May 23, 2025, according to a Taiwan News release.

Commercial contractors at mixed revenue levels make a useful peer group for a commercial lawn operation. A vendor-commissioned study still reflects the questions the vendor chose to ask, so read its findings as what this sample reported in May 2025, not as a verdict on every crew in the country. A separate October 7, 2025 Aspire release, covered by Barchart, does not confirm the sample size.

Which figures are secondhand, and how to check them

The 51% figure for recruiting and retaining staff comes from a NALP summary of the Aspire report. The full report was not reviewed, and the summary places that figure beside cost of materials at 52% and winning new bids at 38%. Read the three as a ranking of hurdles, not a trend line.

Before a number reaches a board memo or a crew briefing, run a short check:

• Find the original release or report, not a repost of it.
• Confirm the fieldwork dates and check that they match the sample you are quoting.
• Note whether the question asked about a hurdle, a plan or a forecast, because those answer different planning questions.
• Drop any figure with no date or sample. Some coverage cites an undated recruiting-concern statement that we could not tie to a survey, and it should stay out of your plan.

What a survey cannot tell one contractor about its own crew

A regional average cannot show your overtime, your turnover, or if your two open positions are field roles or a crew lead slot. A contractor that won bids through spring and then stalled on mowing hours in August will not find that story in any survey table.

The useful comparison is internal. Pull several months of timecards, split hours by route and by role, and see where the shortfall actually falls. Then compare that gap to the peer figures, rather than the other way round.

Using peer data to frame the hiring plan

Peer figures work best as assumptions. If the Green Industry Pros results describe a segment where more than half expect to add crew, your plan should name the role-level gap you expect and state what happens if you cannot fill it.

Keep field workers and crew leaders on separate lines. The reported 42% and 59% suggest those roles face different pressures, so one blended headcount target hides the gap you most need to close. Tie each hire to the contracts it protects, because a single added crew member who keeps two routes running is easier to justify than an open requisition with no clear end use.

Bringing the same gap into a robot pilot discussion

A robot pilot should answer a question the labor data raised. It should not be a general enthusiasm for automation. Start narrow: pick one property or one repeatable route where your timecards show strain, and set an hour target and a stop rule before anything runs.

Service Robot Co. leases commercial robots through financing on a 3-year lease, and we quote one fixed lease payment after a site assessment. Every unit we deploy is covered by RoboCare, our service plan, backed by regional service engineers in each state we serve. We choose the robot that fits the work, across manufacturers, instead of starting from one catalog. A site assessment is the step that turns your own hours data into a lease quote for that specific site.