Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Commercial and Institutional Contractor Revenue Benchmark
General contractors building offices, retail, schools, hospitals and other commercial or institutional structures.
Average Commercial and Institutional Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every commercial or institutional building contractor with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$14,339,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
40,840
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $585.6 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $585.6 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 40,840 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $14,339,000 per employer establishment. A general contractor books the whole contract value as revenue, including work performed by subcontractors, which lifts this figure well above what the firm itself performs.
Scope: Commercial and Institutional Building Construction, NAICS 236220. Classified separately in group 2362: 236210 Industrial Building Construction. 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 July 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Nonresidential building construction, NAICS 2362, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
58.0%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 53.8 to 60.1 percent. This category is effectively the whole group: 40,840 of the 43,965 employer establishments in it, so the group figure and the category figure describe nearly the same population. 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.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈10% |
Payroll share of receipts, Commercial and Institutional Building Construction, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 10.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, which is low for a construction trade. Subcontractor payments are not payroll, so a firm that subcontracts most of the work shows a small share against a large contract value.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to subcontractors and owner compensation, and the census ratio cannot show how much of a project a firm self-performs.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 16.1 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.04 |
Scale and ownership, Commercial and Institutional Building Construction, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 16.1 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm.
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.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Commercial and Institutional Contractor: context the census does not publish.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- How much of the contract does the firm self-perform? Revenue includes subcontracted work, so two firms with identical receipts can differ enormously in what they actually build with their own crews.
- What does the backlog look like beyond this year? Commercial work is awarded in lumps. A single year of receipts says nothing about whether the pipeline behind it is full or empty.
- How is retainage handled on these contracts? Money earned and money received diverge in this trade, and retainage held to completion can be a substantial part of a year's margin.
- Is the work negotiated or hard bid? Negotiated work and competitively bid work carry different margins and different risk, and the census figure cannot separate them.
- Who holds the schedule risk? Liquidated damages for late completion appear in many commercial contracts, so a delay caused upstream can still land on the general contractor.
Explore More on BusinessNES
Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.
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.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each office with paid staff rather than each project or joint venture.