Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Appliance Repair Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Repair and maintenance of household appliances, usually in the customer's home.

NAICS 811412, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Appliance Repair Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every appliance repair business with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$530,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

5,394

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $2.9 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $2.9 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 5,394 employer establishments works out to $530,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Appliance Repair and Maintenance (NAICS 811412). Household appliance repair and maintenance; consumer electronics and precision equipment are a separate category. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

The unit of production here is the completed house call, and the ceiling is set by geography rather than by demand: a technician who drives forty minutes between jobs cannot finish as many as one working a dense suburb. Warranty work for manufacturers pays differently from consumer calls, and a shop that carries brand certifications earns a share of its revenue on those terms rather than at its own rates. First call resolution is the quiet driver: a return visit for the wrong part consumes a slot without producing an invoice.

Every quote competes with the shelf price of a new machine, so falling appliance prices quietly move the line where repair stops making sense for the customer. Parts availability often settles the rest: a discontinued control board can end a job that was already half diagnosed and half driven to.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance, NAICS 8114, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

54.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 77.9 percent at 1 year, 65.3 percent at 2 years, 58.3 percent at 3 years, 56.7 percent at 4 years, 54.2 percent at 5 years. 1,521 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 46.7 to 54.2 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 77.9 percent of the starting count2 years: 65.3 percent of the starting count3 years: 58.3 percent of the starting count4 years: 56.7 percent of the starting count5 years: 54.2 percent of the starting count77.965.358.356.754.2Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years1,521 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 54 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 46.7 to 54.2 percent. This benchmark covers Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance, NAICS 8114, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for appliance repair businesses on their own: they are 5,394 of the 21,954 employer establishments in that group, about 25 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers technicians and dispatch, not the parts, vehicles and fuel that a mobile repair operation carries every day.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈31%

Payroll share of receipts, Appliance Repair and Maintenance, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 31.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Technician hours are what the customer buys here, so headcount is the first thing to look at when this share moves. Travel time between appointments is paid but is not directly billable, which is why route density and scheduling belong in any review of this ratio.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 5 personal and household goods repair categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$531,034$453,3691 of 5
Payroll share of receipts31.28%30.28%2 of 5
Employer establishments5,3943,2572 of 5

Position among 5 personal and household goods repair categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 1st of 5 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 5 by employer establishment count and 2nd of 5 by payroll share. Payroll equals 31.28 percent of receipts here, 1.00 percentage points above the group median of 30.28 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Appliance Repair and Maintenance (this page)$531,03431.28%5,394
Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance$524,56929.18%10,982
Home and Garden Equipment Repair and Maintenance$453,36920.39%1,607
Reupholstery and Furniture Repair$414,13332.74%3,257
Footwear and Leather Goods Repair$292,31730.28%714

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance, Home and Garden Equipment Repair and Maintenance, Reupholstery and Furniture Repair and Footwear and Leather Goods Repair. It contains more employer establishments than three of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Appliance Repair and Maintenance (NAICS 811412), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For appliance repair, note that consumer electronics and precision equipment repair sit in a separate Census category.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

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