Key takeaways
- The most recent GCSAA labor survey we could locate is the 2025 Capital Budget and Labor Survey, not the 2022 data.
- Association surveys describe a sampled market, so they cannot report your crew's hours, turnover or overtime.
- Salary and expenditure figures move for different reasons, so read each survey on its own terms.
- A twelve-month baseline built from your payroll and schedules gives you the comparison that matters.
What does an association labor survey actually tell you?
An association labor survey tells you how the market feels and where pressure is building across many facilities. It cannot tell you how many hours your crew worked last month, how many people left, or how much overtime you paid. Those answers sit in your payroll and scheduling records, not in a sample of peer operations.
First, a correction to the usual framing. The most recent GCSAA labor survey we could locate is not the 2022 data. A 2025 Capital Budget and Labor Survey report exists, and GCSAA lists it on its operations surveys page. We could only read a fragmentary extract of it, and that extract did not let us confirm 2025 labor headcount, vacancy, overtime or labor-cost averages.
Read the survey for direction and context. Use your own records to judge the crew you actually have.
How large is the sample behind the 2025 figures?
The extract we reviewed reports 7,842 facilities surveyed and 1,299 completed, a 17% response, with a margin of error of ±2.5 points. A 17% response means the figures describe the facilities that chose to answer, not every course, park or campus in the membership.
The spread is wide as well. According to the same extract, 16% of respondents had a 2025 capital budget of $0, and 37% had one above $200,000. Capital budgets were highest in the Southwest and Northeast, and private facilities averaged significantly higher budgets than other facility types. A single average folds a small operation and a large one into the same line.
Why can't a regional average describe your crew?
Hours, turnover and overtime belong to a specific team. A market average can confirm that staffing is tight in your region and still say nothing about whether your night crew lost three people in one quarter. Turnover builds from individual departures, hires and seasonal swings, and a survey response captures none of them.
A survey answer also describes conditions as a respondent sees them. Your payroll records what actually happened. When a respondent rates the labor market as hard, that is useful background. It does not explain why your overtime doubled in July.
Why do salary and expenditure figures point in different directions?
GCSAA's biennial salary report is a separate instrument from the labor survey. For the 2021 data, published in October 2022, average base superintendent salary was $97,354, up 4.5% from 2019, from a 43% response rate. A May 2025 report on the biennial results said superintendent salaries rose 10.6%.
USGA coverage of the 2024 GCSAA Maintenance Budget Survey reported that average national labor expenditures rose 17% from 2022 to 2024. Expenditure is dollars spent. It mixes wage rates, headcount, overtime and contract labor, so it cannot be divided back into hours. A rising line could mean more people, higher pay or heavier overtime, and the figure alone cannot tell you which.
What belongs in a crew staffing baseline?
Build the baseline from records you already keep. Use a fixed twelve-month window so seasonal peaks show up. Five measures cover most of the picture, and each comes straight from payroll or scheduling.
Turnover for a period is separations divided by average headcount, expressed as a percentage. Keep that formula fixed. A changed definition breaks the trend line before you can read it.
- Paid hours per crew member per week, split into regular and overtime hours
- Overtime hours as a share of total paid hours, by month
- Separations and hires, each with a date, so turnover can be calculated
- Days from posting a vacancy to a new hire starting work
- Hours per completed route or cut, which links staffing to output
How do you compare your baseline with industry trends?
Compare direction, not the level. If association data shows pay pressure rising and your overtime share also rose, the market and your crew are telling the same story. If your overtime climbed while the market figure stayed flat, the cause is probably local, such as an open vacancy, a route change or a peak you did not staff for.
Match like with like. A large private facility and a small municipal operation face different constraints, so pick the survey segment closest to your facility type and region. Label every figure with its survey year, so a 2025 number is never read as a description of 2026.
Where does equipment fit once the baseline is clear?
When the baseline shows overtime absorbing work that repeats on a schedule, equipment can change the arithmetic. Service Robot Co. is a full-service commercial robot integrator. We are OEM-neutral, so we select robots across manufacturers for the task, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service each unit through a nationwide US engineer network, with one vendor across the lifecycle.
Our offer is commercial robot leasing on a 3-year lease, with one fixed lease payment quoted after a site assessment. That quote follows the same discipline as the baseline: measure the hours and the task first, then decide whether a robot changes the total. Some staffing gaps call for hiring, rescheduling or a service contract, and the assessment will say so.
What should you do this quarter?
Pull twelve months of payroll and schedules, then set the latest association report beside them. Note where the two agree and where they split. Revise the baseline each quarter, so every new survey is read against your own record rather than a neighbor's.
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