Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Dry Cleaning and Laundry Revenue Benchmark (Except Coin-Operated)

Drycleaning and laundry services handled by staff, excluding self-service coin-operated laundromats.

NAICS 812320, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Dry Cleaning and Laundry Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every drycleaning and laundry business with paid employees, excluding coin-operated laundromats, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$440,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

16,325

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $7.1 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $7.1 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 16,325 employer establishments works out to $440,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) (NAICS 812320). Drycleaning and laundry services except coin-operated; self-service laundromats are a separate category. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Attended garment care runs higher than unattended self-service laundry on revenue per site because staff handle the work and pricing is per item rather than per machine. Drop-off and pickup routes are counted here too, not only storefronts.

Dress codes shifted after 2020 and have not fully returned, while solvent handling and environmental rules add fixed compliance cost to every plant.

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

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

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.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Drycleaning and Laundry Services, NAICS 8123, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

61.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 87.9 percent at 1 year, 78.1 percent at 2 years, 69.3 percent at 3 years, 65.7 percent at 4 years, 61.2 percent at 5 years. 1,777 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 55.9 to 61.2 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 87.9 percent of the starting count2 years: 78.1 percent of the starting count3 years: 69.3 percent of the starting count4 years: 65.7 percent of the starting count5 years: 61.2 percent of the starting count87.978.169.365.761.2Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years1,777 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 61 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 55.9 to 61.2 percent. This benchmark covers Drycleaning and Laundry Services, NAICS 8123, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for drycleaning and laundry businesses on their own: they are 16,325 of the 29,408 employer establishments in that group, about 56 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers pressers, counter staff and drivers, not solvents, utilities or the plant equipment behind each order.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈33%

Payroll share of receipts, Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated), United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 33.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Pressing and finishing are manual, so payroll follows garment volume closely and rises with service levels rather than with prices.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 4 laundry and textile service categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$435,692$3,965,6984 of 4
Payroll share of receipts33.10%28.59%2 of 4
Employer establishments16,3256,099.51 of 4

Position among 4 laundry and textile service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 4th of 4 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 4 by employer establishment count and 2nd of 4 by payroll share. Payroll equals 33.10 percent of receipts here, 4.51 percentage points above the group median of 28.59 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 3 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) (this page)$435,69233.10%16,325
Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners$510,29118.39%10,773
Linen Supply$7,421,10435.08%884
Industrial Launderers$8,447,35224.08%1,426

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners, Linen Supply and Industrial Launderers. It contains more employer establishments than all three of them. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about drycleaning and laundry businesses, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

Plants and drop stores are counted together. A location with cleaning equipment on site carries capital, permits and environmental obligations that a shopfront sending work elsewhere does not.

The long shift toward casual dress is not visible in one year of receipts. Demand for this service follows workplace dress conventions, which move slowly and do not reverse quickly.

Operator lens

  • Route work is steadier than counter work. Pickup and delivery, hotels, restaurants and uniform contracts arrive on a schedule, while counter trade follows the weather and the calendar.
  • Solvent handling is a compliance question first. Equipment choice determines permits, inspections and what happens to the premises at the end of a lease.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • Is there a plant on site or is work sent out? This single fact changes the capital, the permits and the environmental liability.
  • What is the environmental history of the property? Solvent contamination attaches to land and can outlast several owners.
  • What share of volume is contract or route work? Recurring accounts are the most defensible part of this business.
  • How old is the cleaning and pressing equipment? Replacement is expensive and modern machines change the permit position.
  • What happens to the counter trade if a nearby employer leaves? Many locations depend on a small number of workplaces nearby.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) (NAICS 812320), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For garment care, note that self-service coin-operated laundromats are a separate Census category.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

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