Pest Control: An Important Contributor to the Nation
Pest management plays a major role in allowing us to live healthier, more prosperous and comfortable lives. The pest control industry, with approximately 14,250 firms, does an estimated $3.8 billion a year in sales. Nationally, they employ over 66,600 service technicians and 33,000 office and sales personnel. These firms annually service more than 12 million dwellings, 288,000 retail food establishments, 480,000 commercial restaurants and kitchens, and 66,000 hotels and motels nationwide.
However, the industry’s importance to the nation as a whole is considerably broader. Effective pest management practices protect this country’s $4 trillion worth of construction from wood destroying insects. We live in a country where plagues and epidemics are vague memories. Americans no longer worry about getting malaria, yellow fever or dengue fever. Once common and greatly feared afflictions, these pest-borne diseases have been brought under control through modern pest control and modern medicine. A child born in 1940 had a life expectancy of 63 years. A child born in 1984 has a life expectancy of 74.7 years, an increase of more than 11 years.
Without pest management practices, over 60 percent of our food crops would be destroyed by pests. That would mean that corn, for example, would cost $22 per dozen ears. Only 11 percent of the average American’s disposable income is spent on food, compared to nearly 20 percent in Japan and over 52 percent in China.
In fact, it would be difficult to find any segment of the food industry which could comply with federal sanitation regulations without an adequate pest management program.
An important fact is that although the industry’s total revenue is just 1/10th of one percent of the nations’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the industry positively affects certain industries (agriculture, food processing, travel) that contribute 40 percent to our GDP.