Cemetery and Crematory Revenue Benchmark

Average Cemetery and Crematory Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every cemetery, memorial garden, mausoleum and crematory with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of establishments gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$1,094,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $5.6 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 5,092 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $1,094,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Cemeteries and Crematories, NAICS 812220. The category covers cemeteries, memorial gardens, mausoleums and crematories. Funeral homes are counted in a separate category even when they own a crematory as part of the same business. Classified separately in group 8122: 812210 Funeral Homes and Funeral Services. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

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

Employer Establishments at Year Five Smaller cohort

Death Care Services, NAICS 8122, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 73.9 to 82.3 percent. This benchmark covers Death Care Services, NAICS 8122, as a whole, and this category accounts for 5,092 of the 20,574 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Cemeteries and Crematories, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 28.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a modest share that covers grounds crews, interment staff, crematory operators and office staff in a business where land and long-term care obligations absorb much of the rest.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes deposits into perpetual care trusts, grounds equipment and the cost of developing new burial sections.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Cemeteries and Crematories, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 6.6 people, and the industry counted 1.4 employer establishments per firm. A cemetery of that size employs a small grounds and office crew, and the establishments per firm figure shows that cemetery companies and religious or municipal organizations operating several sites are common alongside single independent cemeteries.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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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.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Cemetery and Crematory: what a revenue average cannot say about a business with perpetual obligations.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Who owns the cemetery? Religious organizations, municipalities, nonprofit associations and for-profit companies all run cemeteries, with different tax positions, pricing and goals. The census counts those with paid employees together, so the average describes a mixed category.
• How much of a sale goes into trust? Many states impose perpetual-care or merchandise-trust requirements on some cemetery sales, but the rules and required amounts vary by jurisdiction. Receipts include those sales even where part of the money must be set aside for decades.
• Burial or cremation? The shift toward cremation changes the products a cemetery sells, from plots and vaults to niches, urns and scattering gardens, and it lowers the value of a typical sale. A cemetery's position on that shift shapes its future more than its past receipts.
• How much land is left? A cemetery sells a finite inventory of space, and one nearing capacity earns mainly from interments, maintenance and cremation rather than new plots. The remaining developable land is the central asset that a revenue figure cannot show.
• What does perpetual care cost? Mowing, tree work, drainage, road repair and monument maintenance continue whether or not a plot is sold this year, and trust income may or may not cover them. Grounds upkeep is a permanent obligation that revenue must fund.
• Is there a funeral home on site? Combination operations that add a funeral home or a crematory serving other funeral homes earn from services the census counts elsewhere when they are separate businesses. What a given establishment includes shapes its revenue considerably.