Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Auto Body Shop Revenue Benchmark (Body, Paint and Interior Repair)
Collision, paint and interior repair work on vehicles, usually billed through insurance.
Average Auto Body Shop Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every automotive body, paint and interior 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.
≈$1,330,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
34,618
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $45.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $45.9 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 34,618 employer establishments works out to $1,330,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Automotive Body, Paint, and Interior Repair and Maintenance (NAICS 811121). The category covers body, paint and interior repair and maintenance, which is wider than collision work alone. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Tickets here are large and slow, since a single repair can occupy a bay for days and is usually settled with an insurer rather than a driver. The Census category is wider than collision alone and includes paint and interior work.
Insurer rate schedules cap what a shop can bill for many operations, and parts supply delays hold finished work in the bay without adding revenue.
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
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
Automotive repair and maintenance, NAICS 8111, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
59.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 57.3 to 60.2 percent. This benchmark covers Automotive repair and maintenance, NAICS 8111, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for body, paint and interior repair shops on their own: they are 34,618 of the 167,855 employer establishments in that group, about 21 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers technicians, painters and estimators, not parts, paint or the booth and frame equipment behind each repair.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈29% |
Payroll share of receipts, Automotive Body, Paint, and Interior Repair and Maintenance, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 29.0 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. Skilled technicians and painters carry this trade, and the payroll share sits above quick service automotive work because the labor is specialized.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 7 automotive service categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.
| Measure | This category | Group median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per employer establishment | $1,325,846 | $844,225 | 1 of 7 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 28.57% | 26.82% | 2 of 7 |
| Employer establishments | 34,618 | 9,893 | 2 of 7 |
Position among 7 automotive service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 1st of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 7 by employer establishment count and 2nd of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 28.57 percent of receipts here, 1.75 percentage points above the group median of 26.82 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 category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive Body, Paint, and Interior Repair and Maintenance (this page) | $1,325,846 | 28.57% | 34,618 |
| Automotive Glass Replacement Shops | $1,079,176 | 22.59% | 6,963 |
| Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops | $975,110 | 26.82% | 9,893 |
| General Automotive Repair | $844,225 | 26.41% | 84,104 |
| Car Washes | $762,434 | 29.85% | 19,422 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Automotive Glass Replacement Shops, Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops, General Automotive Repair and Car Washes. 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.
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about body, paint and interior repair shops, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Collision work is largely paid by insurers, and insurer program membership is invisible in the census figure. Direct repair agreements bring steady volume at negotiated rates, and a shop inside those programs runs a different business from one outside them.
Cycle time is absent too. The days a vehicle occupies a bay waiting for parts or approvals decide how much work a shop can process, independently of how skilled the technicians are.
Operator lens
- Capacity is measured in bays and calendar days. A shop with fast approvals and reliable parts supply earns from the same footprint as one where vehicles sit, without adding a single technician.
- Calibration requirements keep rising. Driver assistance systems mean an ordinary bumper repair can now require sensor calibration, and a shop without that equipment sublets the work and the margin.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- Which insurer programs does the shop hold? Ask which agreements exist, what they require, and whether they survive a change of ownership.
- What is the current cycle time? Cycle time, the days from drop-off to delivery, explains throughput better than revenue does.
- What calibration and scanning can be done in-house? Work that is sublet leaves the shop as cost rather than margin.
- How is the paint booth equipped and permitted? Booths carry environmental permits and expensive maintenance, and both are location-specific.
- Who negotiates the estimates? The person who argues supplements with adjusters materially affects revenue per repair.
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 Automotive Body, Paint, and Interior Repair and Maintenance (NAICS 811121), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For body shops, note that the Census category also covers paint and interior repair and maintenance.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.