Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Barber Shop Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Chair-based haircuts, shaves and grooming for a mostly walk-in clientele.

NAICS 812111, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Barber Shop Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Barber shops keep their own line in the 2022 Economic Census, which tabulates the employer establishments and the combined receipts behind the average below.

≈$240,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

7,025

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $1.7 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $1.7 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 7,025 employer establishments works out to $240,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Barber Shops (NAICS 812111). Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Barber shops report a low average by the standards of the Census employer categories, and it is labor-intensive by payroll share. The employer-only scope matters even more here: chair rental and solo barbering are common, and none of that activity appears in these figures.

Throughput carries most of the revenue here: short services, walk-in flow and rebooking rhythm move the total more than price per cut does. A shop's ceiling starts at the doorway: the number of chairs and the hours they are staffed set the outer limit, and how much of that time is actually booked, at what ticket, decides how much of the limit is reached.

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 care services, NAICS 8121, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

57.0%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 82.3 percent at 1 year, 71.9 percent at 2 years, 64.1 percent at 3 years, 61.8 percent at 4 years, 57.0 percent at 5 years. 13,758 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 52.8 to 57.0 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 82.3 percent of the starting count2 years: 71.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 64.1 percent of the starting count4 years: 61.8 percent of the starting count5 years: 57.0 percent of the starting count82.371.964.161.857.0Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years13,758 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 57 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 52.8 to 57.0 percent. This benchmark covers Personal care services, NAICS 8121, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for barber shops on their own: they are 7,025 of the 155,827 employer establishments in that group, about 5 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

In barbering payroll carries a large share of the model: close to half of every revenue dollar goes out as pay, and the verified share below shows exactly how much.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈48%

Payroll share of receipts, Barber Shops, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 48.0 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. Nearly half of receipts returning to the chairs is the signature of this trade; the shop sells skilled minutes and very little else. Chairs and clippers are close to the whole equipment list, and rent is the standing monthly commitment; inventory needs run smaller than in retail-heavy businesses, though supplies and resale products still cost real money.

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 beauty and personal care 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$236,749$342,2375 of 5
Payroll share of receipts47.68%35.47%1 of 5
Employer establishments7,02529,6924 of 5

Position among 5 beauty and personal care categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 5th of 5 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 4th of 5 by employer establishment count and 1st of 5 by payroll share. Payroll equals 47.68 percent of receipts here, 12.21 percentage points above the group median of 35.47 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
Barber Shops (this page)$236,74947.68%7,025
Beauty Salons$307,75244.28%83,392
Nail salons$342,23731.92%33,212
Other Personal Care Services$460,63335.47%29,692
Diet and Weight Reducing Centers$951,91615.30%2,506

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Beauty Salons, Nail salons, Other Personal Care Services and Diet and Weight Reducing Centers. It contains more employer establishments than one 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 barber shops, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

The employer-only scope matters more here than in most trades. Chair rental is common, and a shop where every barber rents reports almost nothing as revenue while looking busy from the street.

Appointment structure, walk-in versus booked chairs, is likewise invisible here. A walk-in shop and a booked shop have different utilization, different waiting areas and different tolerance for a quiet Tuesday.

Operator lens

  • Clients tend to follow a barber rather than a sign. That makes retention of experienced staff the central management task, because a departure takes a book of business out the door with it.
  • A chair earns only while someone is in it. With short services and no inventory to sell, the result is decided by how many of the day's slots are filled rather than by what each one is priced at.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • Are the barbers employed or renting chairs? This determines what you are buying: a service business or a small commercial landlord.
  • How long has each barber been in the shop? Tenure is the best available proxy for whether the client base stays after a sale.
  • Is the trade walk-in or booked? Booked shops have predictable days; walk-in shops have predictable rent and unpredictable revenue.
  • What is the lease term and the walk-in traffic like? This is a location-dependent business, and a move of even a block changes it.
  • How much revenue comes from services beyond cutting? Shaves, beard work and products carry different margins and different time per chair.

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 Barber Shops (NAICS 812111), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Solo barbers and chair renters sit outside these employer figures, and they are common.

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.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.