Definitive Guide to Commercial Irrigation
A focused guide on hiring, vetting, and retaining commercial irrigation technicians, designers, and PMs - including what CIT, CIC, CID, and CLIA credentials actually verify, why the BLS has no dedicated code for this trade, and a practical hiring playbook built around a labor market where hiring-intent search actually outpaces salary research.
What's inside
- Why irrigation has no dedicated BLS occupation - and how the work actually splits between grounds maintenance and licensed plumbing scope
- What CIT, CIC, CID, and CLIA certifications actually require - and why "certified" alone is not enough to verify on a resume
- The 10 most-recruited commercial irrigation roles, with the real BLS classification (or disclosed gap) behind each one
- A practical hiring playbook for a trade with real seasonal turnover and few standing pipelines built for it
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Download Definitive Guide to Commercial IrrigationThe commercial irrigation market this paper is about, in federal numbers.
Every claim the paper makes sits on top of these. They are published, they are free, and we would rather you saw them first.
There were 122,438 landscaping companies in the United States in 2023, employing 878,894 people at an average of $48,279 a year. Against 2018 that is +13% employers, +12% employment, +31% average pay - five years, before inflation is taken out of any of it. BLS counts irrigation contractors under landscaping companies.
There is no federal occupation code for commercial irrigation on its own. Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers is the closest published occupation, and it is what every figure in this section describes.
Where the work is most concentrated.
- Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL — 2.72× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 5,080 employed
- North Port-Sarasota, FL — 2.27× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 4,740 employed
- Port St. Lucie, FL — 2.23× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 2,330 employed
- Bridgeport, CT — 1.99× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 4,920 employed
- Deltona-Daytona, FL — 1.94× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 2,610 employed
- Myrtle Beach, SC — 1.78× the national rate of landscaping and groundskeeping workers, 1,590 employed
Concentration is not the same as volume. A metro can be the densest market in the country for a trade and still be a small one - which is exactly the condition that makes a search hard, and is why the paper treats the two separately.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2018 and 2023 annual averages, private-sector employers. Concentration from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
