Collection Agency Revenue Benchmark

Average Collection Agency Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every collection agency with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts, which are the fees and commissions earned on collections rather than the debts recovered. Dividing that total by the number of agencies gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$4,941,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $15.2 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 3,068 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $4,941,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Collection Agencies, NAICS 561440. The category covers agencies collecting debts on behalf of others. Repossession services, law offices and credit bureaus are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 5614: 561410 Document Preparation Services; 561421 Telephone Answering Services; 561422 Telemarketing Bureaus and Other Contact Centers, and 6 further codes. 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 Industry group

Business Support Services, NAICS 5614, 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 47.7 to 56.1 percent. This benchmark covers Business Support Services, NAICS 5614, as a whole, and this category accounts for 3,068 of the 30,490 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, Collection Agencies, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 33.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a substantial share because collectors and their supervisors are the service, and revenue is the fee kept rather than the money recovered.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and revenue here means fees and commissions, not the amounts collected and remitted to clients, so the figure describes what an agency earns for its work.

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, Collection Agencies, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 33.8 people, and the industry averaged 1.2 employer establishments per firm, which confirms that multi-establishment ownership exists in the published population without showing how establishments are distributed across firms. As an illustration, that headcount could be a floor of collectors with supervisors, compliance and client service staff.

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.

Explore More on BusinessNES

Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.

• Examples of Risk Management Guide
• Repossession Service Benchmark
• Consumer Lending Company Benchmark
• Law Office Benchmark
• All Business Benchmarks

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

Collection Agency: what contingency fees, account quality and consumer protection rules do to an agency's average.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Contingency fee or fixed-fee collections? Contingency arrangements pay the agency a percentage of what it recovers, while fixed-fee and early-stage programs pay per account regardless of outcome. The mix decides how revenue tracks recoveries, and companies that buy debt and collect for their own account are counted in a financial category rather than here.
• Which accounts are placed? Fresh medical or utility accounts recover at far higher rates than old, previously worked debts, so the age and type of accounts an agency receives decide its revenue per collector. Account quality is invisible in an annual total.
• Which rules govern the calls? Federal and state consumer protection laws regulate how, when and how often collectors may contact debtors, with licensing and bonding requirements that vary by state. Compliance staff, training and litigation risk are permanent costs outside a receipts figure.
• How productive is the floor? Collector productivity, measured in recoveries per hour of calling, decides whether a contingency agency covers its payroll, and dialer technology and skip tracing tools shape it. That productivity does not appear in receipts.
• Who are the clients? Healthcare systems, utilities, lenders and property managers place accounts on different terms and volumes, and an agency dependent on one large client carries that risk. The client mix decides revenue stability.
• How do payment channels change the work? Online portals, text reminders and payment plans let debtors settle without a call and can lower the cost of each recovery, while rules on digital contact vary. The tools an agency uses decide its cost per recovery as much as its headcount does.