According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

World Contract Cleaning Services market is forecast to maintain a CAGR of 3.9% over the 2001-2010 period to reach US$155.3 billion by 2010. Offices dominate the global market for Contract Cleaning Services, with a share estimated at 31.6% in 2007. In terms of growth, however, Residential Dwellings are forecast to surpass all other end-use sectors for Contract Cleaning Services, with a projected CAGR of 4.36% over 2001-2010.

In long run, cleaning is considered a stable and growing market, while in the short run, there is very little effect of economic upheavals on this industry as cleaning is the last thing to be impacted in the economic cycle. Also, the health and safety legislations restrict the companies and other sectors to cut back on cleaning activities and the cost savings from removing cleaning activities from the basic job is very small. Long-term drastic measures against cleaning activities are only taken when there are large-scale business failures. One of the possible reasons for long-term slowdown in the office-cleaning sector is that more and more office workers start working at home when there are business failures. These negatives are generally offset by the growing trends in facilities such as airports, major shopping centers, gyms, and other public and private places.

Cleaning services are provided by direct labor as well as by contract cleaning companies. The outsourced cleaning services are known as 'Contract Cleaning Services'. Cleaning services are lately being included in the support services and are apparently one of the commodity areas within this group. These services are also perceived to be a part of Facilities Management (FM), as today's customers' requirements include a number of support services, of which cleaning services are only a part of it.

The contract cleaning industry is labor intensive, wherein wages are the main cost borne by the service providers. Duration of cleaning contracts may vary from one year to several years. Lack of data on contract cleaning industry and involvement of substantial amount of illegal or undeclared workers by the contract cleaning companies are the two major factors that deters analysts from making projections for the market. Another factor is the difficulty in segregating revenues generated from contract cleaning services out of the bundled or packaged contracts. Lately a trend of contracting out a bundle of services to one particular company has been observed in the service sector.

Contract cleaning service providers are exposed to growing competition, escalating insurance costs, volatile costs of supplies, and availability and sustenance of economical labor. A primary concern for the industry is the high rate of employee burnout, affecting the stability as well as growth of many service providers. Poor profit margins and intense competition from big, established companies drives out new entrants from the market.

Major companies covered include ABM Industries Incorporated, Chem-Dry, Coverall Cleaning Concepts, Dublcheck, Ecolab, Inc., Horizon National Contract Services, LLC, Interserve plc, ISS (Integrated Service Solutions) A/S, JAN-PRO International, Jani-King International, Inc., JohnsonDiversey Inc., Medirest, Merry Maids, MITIE Group Plc, Pall Mall, OCS Group Ltd., OneSource, Quick Cleaning, Rentokil Initial Plc and The ServiceMaster Company.

End-use sectors analyzed in the study include Offices, Institutions, Residential Dwellings, Commercial & Industrial Buildings, and Other End-Use Sectors.