If your last few quotes felt higher than you remember, you’re not imagining it: home service prices kept climbing right through the second quarter of 2026. Jobber’s new Home Service Economic Report for Q2 2026, released August 20 and built on data from more than 100,000 home and commercial service businesses across the US and Canada, found revenue growing in every major segment — and the growth is coming mostly from bigger invoices, not more jobs.
That’s the part homeowners should sit with. Pros call it “pricing discipline.” From the customer’s side of the invoice, it means the cost of the same visit keeps drifting up.
What the Q2 2026 Numbers Show
The quarter had every excuse to be ugly. A gas price shock pushed inflation to its highest level in over two years just as spring booking season opened, and consumer confidence wobbled. Homeowners kept spending anyway. By June, every major segment Jobber tracks was growing revenue year-over-year:
- Lawn care and landscaping posted the strongest run of any segment — median revenue up 7.5% in June, with invoice sizes climbing 8.4%.
- Cleaning businesses grew steadily all quarter, reaching 7.6% growth in June on repeat customers and rising invoice sizes.
- Contracting trades — electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers — closed the quarter up 6.4%, riding a wave of urgent repair work.
- Construction swung hardest, up 12.0% in April and 9.1% in June.
Notice the pattern: invoice sizes and urgent work are doing the lifting. That echoes what we covered yesterday in the August HVAC price hikes — equipment and parts costs are moving, and pros are passing them through rather than eating them.
Why Prices Are Rising Faster Than Demand
Three forces are stacking:
- Input costs. Fuel, equipment, and parts all cost more than a year ago, and this spring’s gas spike hit mobile businesses — which is every lawn, cleaning, and repair crew — directly.
- Labor is still scarce. Skilled-trades wages have been climbing for years, and there simply aren’t enough licensed electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs to go around. Scarce labor holds prices firm.
- Pros have learned to price. The report’s core finding is that service businesses held their rates through a confidence dip instead of discounting. When homeowners kept booking anyway, it confirmed the pricing power is real.
What This Means for Homeowners
The gap between planned work and emergency work is widening. Contracting revenue grew on urgent repairs — and urgency is exactly when you can’t shop around. Three practical moves:
- Book maintenance before it becomes a repair. A serviced furnace or cleared gutter in September is far cheaper than the same system failing in January. Mid-August through fall is the sweet spot for booking before schedules fill.
- Compare more than one offer. When prices are moving, the spread between the highest and lowest quote for the same job gets wider. Posting a job and letting vetted pros come to you with offers beats calling down a list — whether you’re in Dallas, Columbus, or Calgary.
- Don’t wait for prices to fall. Nothing in the Q2 data suggests a pullback. If a project matters, the cheapest version of it is probably the one you book this fall.
What This Means for Service Pros
If you run a crew, the report is a green light to price with confidence: homeowners absorbed higher invoices through the worst consumer-confidence stretch in two years. The cleaning segment’s steady climb also shows where durable growth lives — repeat customers. Locking clients into recurring schedules beats chasing one-off jobs, and responding to requests fast still wins the work more often than the lowest bid does.
The busiest segment of all was lawn care — if your yard is eating your weekends, it’s a good moment to find a lawn mowing pro near you before fall cleanup season hits.
Rising prices make how you hire matter more than ever. On Masters’ Guild, you post the job with your budget, identity-verified pros respond with offers, and payment is only released when the work is done — so comparing real prices takes minutes, not days of phone tag.
