2026 Q2

JOBBER HOME SERVICE ECONOMIC REPORT

Read Report

Listen to a summary

6 min

0:00

-0:00

Jobber Tracks the Pulse of Home Service

Jobber is the leading software platform for home and commercial service businesses. It supports over 100,000 businesses and 400,000+ professionals across industries like landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, and cleaning, helping them manage operations and get paid faster.

Home Service is a major but underreported part of the economy—local, labor-intensive, and essential. The Home Service Economic Report (HSER) leverages Jobber’s proprietary data drawn from its more than 400,000 users to offer a rare, real-time view of trends in consumer demand, revenue, and economic conditions across four key segments: Green, Cleaning, Contracting, and Construction.

The HSER delivers actionable insights on market shifts, challenges, and strategies, helping businesses understand what’s happening, why it matters, and how to succeed.

Table of Contents

Intro
Q2 2026 at a Glance
The Broader Home Service Economic Landscape
Home Service Category Performance
Conclusion & Outlook
Methodology & Data Sources

Q2 2026 at a Glance

Q2 2026 put the industry’s resilience to a real test. A gas price shock pushed inflation to its highest level in over two years and rattled consumer confidence just as the spring season got underway. Bookings slowed in response, but the underlying demand never went away, it just showed up as bigger invoices instead of more of them.

Gas prices drove a real inflation spike, before cooling off. Prices rose 4.2% in May, the highest reading in over two years, then eased back to 3.5% in June.
Consumer confidence took a real hit, then partly bounced back. The Michigan sentiment index fell to a near record low of 44.8 in May before recovering to 49.5 in June.
Nobody’s moving, so they’re borrowing to fix up their current residence. With mortgage rates stuck between 6.3% and 6.6% and housing supply still tight, homeowners tapped record home equity, with Home Equity Line of Credit balances hitting $459 billion by June, to pay for repairs.
Labor stayed the industry’s tightest constraint. Construction employment barely grew, and the industry needs roughly 349,000 new workers this year just to keep up, mostly to replace retirees.
Segments saw less jobs, but revenue stayed strong. New work scheduled softened in April and May before leveling off in June, while most segments kept growing revenue by charging more per job.
Digital payments kept climbing. Online payments as a share of all Jobber-processed transactions grew 6% YoY in Q2, an important shift as more small businesses struggle with overdue invoices.

The Broader Home Service Economic Landscape

Gas price spike rattles confidence

An energy price spike pushed inflation to 4.2% in May, the highest reading since 2023, before cooling to 3.5% in June as gas costs came back down¹. Consumer confidence took a real hit, falling to a near record low of 44.8 in May before recovering to 49.5 in June, averaging roughly 12% below year-ago levels for the quarter as households stayed focused on the cost of living².

Nobody’s moving, so people keep borrowing to repair and renovate

Mortgage rates held between 6.3% and 6.6% all quarter, and home supply kept creeping up to 4.5 to 4.6 months by June, even as the median home price hit an all-time high of $443K^3,4,5. Tight supply and low locked-in mortgage rates continue to keep people from moving, favoring repair work over relocation, and increasingly that work is funded with borrowed equity: Home Equity Line of Credit balances climbed to $459 billion by June, up from $446 billion in Q1, continuing its growth for more than four years⁶. With $34.9 trillion in home equity nationwide, tapping it for repairs looks like a durable trend⁷. Forward-looking indicators agree, Harvard’s LIRA points to a gradual slowdown, with homeowners on pace to spend $520 billion this year on improvements, then growth projected to ease from 2.1% later this year to 0.5% by mid-2027⁸. Remodeler confidence stayed solidly positive at 61 on the NAHB index, even as many reported rising material costs⁹.

Not enough hands to keep up with demand

Construction employment grew just 0.8% over the past year, even as demand from projects like data centers keeps climbing, and the industry needs roughly 349,000 net new workers in 2026 just to keep up, mostly to replace retirees^10,11. For Home Service operators, a persistently tight labor market is one more reason invoice sizes have kept climbing even where bookings haven’t.

Home Service Category Performance

Segment Snapshot: Bookings slowed down, but revenue didn’t

Q2 was bumpier than Q1: new work scheduled softened across most segments in April and May before leveling off or turning positive in June as consumer confidence recovered. Revenue held up throughout, in most segments, on continued gains in average invoice size. Fewer new jobs booked, made up for by charging more per job, was the major headline of the quarter.

Green

Bookings dipped mid-quarter, but higher prices kept revenue strong

Green opened the quarter soft, with bookings sliding through April and May down 3.7%, before growing 2.4% in June. Despite the soft bookings, median revenue climbed all quarter: up 13.8% in April, 10.1% in May, and 7.5% in June, the strongest run of any segment. The gap between fewer jobs and more revenue comes down to price: invoice sizes grew right alongside revenue, climbing from 3.5% in April to 8.4% by June, as businesses leaned on bundled seasonal packages to get more out of every job.

Cleaning

A loyal customer base cushions the softest bookings of the quarter

Cleaning saw the softest bookings of the four segments, down every single month, bottoming out at a 5.2% drop in May. What kept the segment growing was its regulars: revenue climbed steadily from 5.0% in April to 7.6% by June, as loyal, repeat customers kept showing up even when new ones didn’t. Rising invoice sizes, up from 3.4% to 5.8% over the quarter, suggest operators leaned on price increases and bundled packages to get more from the customers they already had.

Contracting

A soft middle month gives way to a strong June

Contracting spent most of the quarter treading water before a strong finish. Bookings dipped in April and May, and revenue followed in May, before both flipped in June, when new work turned positive and revenue jumped 6.4%, as urgent repair jobs picked back up. Invoice sizes followed the same arc, falling 3.5% in April before climbing to 2.6% growth in June, a sign that the job mix shifted toward bigger, more urgent work as the quarter wore on.

Construction

Uneven month-to-month timing, but the quarter came out ahead

Construction’s numbers bounced around all quarter, typical for a segment built on big, slow-moving projects. New work scheduled swung from up 2.1% in April, down 1.5% in May, and finished at 4.4% growth in June. Revenue followed a similarly uneven path, strong in April and June (12.0% and 9.1%) but flat in May. Invoice sizes barely moved the whole quarter, likely meaning the revenue swings came from how many jobs got finished and billed, not from charging more per job.

Faster Payments Are Becoming Industry Standard

Digital payments grew roughly 6% as a share of all Jobber-processed transactions in Q2 2026 compared to a year earlier; continuing a steady climb as businesses lean on faster payment collection to manage cash flow.

This shift is getting increasingly important: nearly 3 in 5 small businesses now carry invoices more than 30 days overdue, up sharply from less than half a year ago, according to a Small Business Late Payments Report12. Even once customers do pay, roughly half of owners say normal processing times still strain cash flow. For business owners already contending with the challenges of a tight labor market, offering digital payment options helps ensure cashflow strains don’t become an additional issue.

yoy-growth-online-payments-pct-total-transactions

Conclusion & Outlook

Q2 2026 tested the industry, and it held up.

Q2 2026 was a real stress test. A gas price spike drove inflation to its highest reading since 2023 and knocked consumer confidence to a near record low in May, and bookings slowed across every segment as households pulled back. But the work didn’t stop: with housing supply tight and moving still unattractive, homeowners leaned on record home equity to keep paying for repairs, and every segment found its way back to growing revenue by June.

That resilience had a price. A persistently tight labor market kept pushing invoice sizes higher, a common theme this quarter to offset softer bookings. And with more small businesses carrying overdue invoices, getting paid fast now matters as much as winning the job, one more reason digital payments keep climbing. The operators best positioned for the second half of the year are treating pricing discipline and fast collection as the same strategy.

Methodology & Data Sources:

Inflation data is sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Trading Economics.
Consumer sentiment data is sourced from Surveys of Consumers by the University of Michigan.
30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates are sourced from Freddie Mac, via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Existing home sales and inventory data are sourced from the National Association of Realtors.
Existing home sales prices are sourced from the National Association of Realtors, via Trading Economics.
Home equity line of credit (HELOC) balances are sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Household Debt and Credit Report.
U.S. household real estate and home equity values are sourced from the Federal Reserve, Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States.
The Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) is sourced from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The Remodeling Market Index is sourced from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
Construction employment data is sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via NAHB’s Eye on Housing.
Construction workforce demand estimates are sourced from the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC).
Small business late payment data is sourced from Intuit QuickBooks’ 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report.
Home Service insights in this report are based on proprietary data aggregated from over 400,000 Home Service professionals using Jobber across the United States. This includes segment performance* and digital payment adoption.

*The year-over-year change in median revenue, new work scheduled, and invoice sizes were calculated by aggregating data from a cohort of businesses using Jobber since January 2023. This doesn’t include any new businesses that started using Jobber during that period.