Land and environment
What does a Groundskeeper do?
Working outdoors on growing things, ground and habitats.
What the day is like
- Outside, in the weather.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- Largely on your own.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $40,080 a year, median
- Grounds Maintenance Workers, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Varies; see the handbook page
- Weeks to months. Most people can start from where they are.
- Jobs
- +5% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing slowly
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Repetitive ground work
- Noise and machinery
- Seasonal quiet spells
Easy to enter; the money comes from running your own round or managing a site.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Machinery has replaced muscle in places, but outdoor work that changes by the day has resisted automation.
How to find out whether it suits you
Spend a week with a grounds team and see the work in bad weather too.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.