Landscaping Labor Shortage: Why Finding Workers Is Still a Fight

The landscaping labor shortage has not been solved. According to NALP 2025, the industry employs more than 1.3 million workers, yet open field positions remain a persistent problem that limits how many jobs companies can take on and how reliably they can service the ones they have. If you are running crews and struggling to keep them staffed, you are not alone, and the structural reasons behind this problem are not going away on their own.

Table of Contents

• Why Is the Landscaping Labor Shortage Still This Bad?
• Who Is Competing for the Same Workers?
• How Does the Seasonal Cycle Make Hiring Harder?
• Why This Matters for Landscapers

Why Is the Landscaping Labor Shortage Still This Bad?

According to EB3.Work 2026, the landscaping labor shortage is driven by three overlapping factors: the physically demanding nature of outdoor work, seasonal employment cycles that reduce the year-round appeal of a position, and direct wage competition from adjacent industries. None of those factors have weakened. The Bureau of Labor Statistics 2023 data shows that landscaping and groundskeeping workers earn a national median that puts the trade below construction trades, making it harder to win a compensation argument when a worker can cross the street to a warehouse or a framing crew.

According to NALP 2025, the conversation inside the industry has shifted. Many companies are no longer just hunting for bodies. They are moving toward retaining and developing the workers they already have, because turnover is expensive and experienced crew members are harder to replace than operators initially expect. A three-person team that has worked together for two seasons is worth more in the field than four new hires who each need supervision.

Who Is Competing for the Same Workers?

According to EB3.Work 2026, competition for physically capable outdoor workers comes from construction, warehousing, and logistics. All three sectors have grown their own hiring urgency in recent years. A worker who is comfortable with early starts, physical output, and heat exposure has real options outside of landscaping. Construction wages in particular tend to run higher, and many construction positions carry a perception of better long-term career paths, whether or not that is accurate.

That competition shows up in the numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2023, the industries with the highest employment and wages for landscaping workers do not necessarily overlap with the companies doing the most residential and commercial lawn and landscape work. The best-compensating environments for this labor pool are often not your direct competitors for contracts. They are your indirect competitors for people.

This matters practically. If you are offering a starting wage that was competitive three years ago, it is probably not competitive today. And if your onboarding experience, scheduling, or communication creates friction for new hires, workers with other options will take them. According to Labor Finders 2025, many landscaping businesses cannot afford to make a permanent hire only to find the fit does not work out, which is why temporary staffing and trial periods have become more common as a screening step before full employment.

How Does the Seasonal Cycle Make Hiring Harder?

Seasonal work creates a structural disadvantage that does not apply to warehouses or construction sites running year-round. According to EB3.Work 2026, seasonal employment cycles reduce the year-round appeal of landscaping positions, meaning workers who need consistent income through winter months have a built-in reason to look elsewhere, even if they genuinely like the work during peak season.

Operators in cold-weather markets have tried to address this through service diversification, adding snow removal, holiday lighting, or hardscape work to keep crews on payroll through slower months. That approach can work, but it requires capital investment and operational bandwidth that smaller operators do not always have. For many companies, the seasonal gap remains a real barrier to building a stable workforce that returns the following spring.

There is also a compounding effect. Workers who leave for winter often do not come back. They find something else, settle in, and by the time your phones start ringing again in March, you are recruiting from scratch. The operators who have reduced this churn tend to have one thing in common: they stay in contact with seasonal workers during the off-season and give them a reason to plan on returning. That is less about benefits packages and more about whether your crew feels like a team or a number. You can read more about how labor dynamics affect local service businesses in this related piece on how lawn care operators are responding to operational pressure in 2026.

Why This Matters for Landscapers

The labor shortage is not just a hiring problem. It is a capacity problem that directly affects revenue, customer satisfaction, and your reputation. If you cannot staff a job, you either turn down the work or run it short-handed. Both outcomes cost you. Turning down work during peak season means leaving money on the table. Running crews thin means corners get cut, quality drops, and customers notice.

According to NALP 2025, the companies making progress on this problem are treating workforce development as a business function, not just an HR task. That means defined onboarding, clear advancement paths, consistent communication, and compensation that reflects current market conditions, not what worked in 2021. It also means thinking about what makes your company worth staying at, which is a harder question than it sounds when crews are busy and there is no time to talk about it.

The operators who figure this out first will be able to take on more work, hold better margins, and build the kind of consistent reputation that drives referrals. Reviews and online visibility matter too, and it is worth noting that a company known for reliable, quality crews earns better reviews than one known for missed visits and rushed work. For a look at how consumers choose landscaping services, including the role trust and reviews play, that context is directly relevant to why workforce quality is a customer acquisition issue, not just an operations one.

The labor market in landscaping is tight and likely to stay that way. The operators who treat retention as seriously as recruitment, and who understand why workers leave before the season ends, are the ones building businesses that can actually grow.