Credit Union Revenue Benchmark

Average Credit Union Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every credit union establishment with paid employees, meaning each branch or office, and publishes their combined annual receipts, which for a financial institution means interest and fee income rather than deposits or loans. Dividing that total by the number of establishments gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$4,855,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $95.5 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 19,662 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $4,855,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Credit unions, NAICS 522130. The category covers credit unions, member-owned cooperatives accepting deposits and making loans. Banks, savings institutions and consumer lenders are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 5221: 522110 Commercial Banking; 522180 Savings Institutions and Other Depository Credit Intermediation. 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

Depository credit intermediation, NAICS 5221, 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 59.7 to 68.9 percent. This benchmark covers Depository credit intermediation, NAICS 5221, as a whole, and this category accounts for 19,662 of the 110,105 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, Credit unions, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 24.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a modest share covering tellers, loan officers, member service and back-office staff, and it is a staffing ratio rather than a measure of surplus, because revenue here is interest and fee income rather than sales.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and revenue here means interest and fee income, not deposits, loan principal or assets, so the figure describes what a branch earns rather than the balances it manages.

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, Credit unions, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 16.9 people, and the industry averaged 4.3 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 the tellers, loan officers and member service staff of one branch or office, so the average describes a branch rather than a whole institution.

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

Credit Union: how to read a revenue figure for a financial institution without confusing it with deposits or assets.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• What does revenue mean for a credit union? Receipts here are interest earned on loans and investments plus fees, not the deposits members hold, the loans outstanding or the assets on the balance sheet. A branch holding large balances on thin spreads can report modest revenue, which makes this figure unlike a store's sales.
• Is the payroll share a margin? Payroll as a share of interest and fee income says how much of the income pays staff, but it is not a profit margin, because a credit union's heaviest cost, the interest it pays on deposits, is not reported in this table. Read the share as a staffing ratio only.
• Branch or institution? Because the census counts establishments, each branch of a multi-branch credit union appears on its own, and the average is a branch figure rather than an institutional one. The ownership table above shows how many branches the average institution runs.
• Where were interest rates that year? Interest income moves with market rates and with the spread between what a credit union earns on loans and pays on deposits, so a single year's revenue reflects the rate environment as much as growth. The reference year sits in a period of changing rates.
• Who can join? Membership is limited by a field of membership such as an employer, community or association, which shapes how fast a credit union can grow and which services members want. Field of membership is invisible in the average.
• What is the cooperative model? Credit unions are owned by their members and are generally exempt from federal income tax, and surplus goes back into rates, services and reserves rather than to outside shareholders. That structure changes what revenue is for, and it makes comparisons with banks a matter of care.