Automobile Driving School Revenue Benchmark

Average Driving School Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every automobile driving school with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of schools gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$513,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $1.3 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 2,593 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $513,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Automobile Driving Schools, NAICS 611692. The category covers driving schools teaching people to drive automobiles, including teenage driver education and adult lessons. Truck driving schools are counted with technical and trade schools. Classified separately in group 6116: 611610 Fine Arts Schools; 611620 Sports and Recreation Instruction; 611630 Language Schools, and 2 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

Other Schools and Instruction, NAICS 6116, 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 53.3 to 58.1 percent. This benchmark covers Other Schools and Instruction, NAICS 6116, as a whole, and this category accounts for 2,593 of the 58,784 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, Automobile Driving Schools, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 35.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a substantial share because instructor hours are what a school sells and each lesson needs one licensed instructor in the car with one student.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes vehicles, fuel, commercial insurance and state licensing costs, which together make up most of a school's other spending.

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, Automobile Driving Schools, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 6.9 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. A school of that size employs a handful of instructors, some of them part-time, and a small office, and the establishments per firm figure shows a trade of single-location schools with only a few multi-site operators.

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

Automobile Driving School: the instructor, vehicle and state-rule questions behind a small-school average.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Which state rules shape the demand? Requirements for teen driver education, the hours of instruction needed for a license and the acceptance of online courses vary by state and change over time. Those rules create or remove the core customer base of a school.
• How much does each lesson cost to deliver? One instructor, one car and one student for an hour is a fixed ratio that no amount of scale improves, so pricing per lesson and instructor utilization decide the result. Cancellations and no-shows eat directly into that ratio.
• Are the instructors employees or contractors? Schools differ in whether instructors are salaried, hourly or paid per lesson as contractors, and state licensing may restrict the options. The structure changes both the payroll share and the flexibility to match staffing to demand.
• What do the cars cost? Dual-control vehicles must be bought or leased, fitted, insured, fueled and replaced after heavy use by learners. The fleet is the school's main capital cost and sits outside the revenue figure entirely.
• Is there a school contract? Some driving schools deliver driver education under contract to public or private schools, which brings volume at negotiated prices and depends on renewals. Contract-based schools and open-market schools have different revenue stability.
• How does online learning change the model? Where states accept online classroom courses, the profitable classroom portion can move to national providers, leaving local schools with the labor-intensive in-car hours. The average on this page blends schools exposed to that shift with those that are not.