Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Drywall Contractor Revenue Benchmark (Drywall and Insulation)
Drywall hanging, finishing and insulation work carried out under contract.
Average Drywall Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
Total receipts of drywall and insulation contractors with paid employees, set against the count of those establishments, both from the 2022 Economic Census.
≈$2,860,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
20,226
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $57.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $57.8 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 20,226 employer establishments works out to $2,860,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Drywall and Insulation Contractors (NAICS 238310). The category combines drywall and insulation contractors, so acoustic and insulation specialists are included. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Output here is measured in square feet hung and finished, and the work is often paid by the piece rather than the hour. Insulation sits in the same Census code, which adds a materials-driven line of work to a trade otherwise priced on speed and surface area.
Drywall and insulation are one Census category, so two different scopes of work share this average.
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
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
Building finishing contractors, NAICS 2383, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
55.5%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 53.6 to 59.7 percent. This benchmark covers Building finishing contractors, NAICS 2383, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for drywall and insulation contractors on their own: they are 20,226 of the 125,864 employer establishments in that group, about 16 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers hangers and finishers, not the board, compound and insulation delivered to each job.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈25% |
Payroll share of receipts, Drywall and Insulation Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 25.0 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. Payroll share sits in the upper half of the trades, consistent with a category where installation hours dominate.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 6 building finishing trades in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.
| Measure | This category | Group median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per employer establishment | $2,857,276 | $1,354,145 | 1 of 6 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 25.27% | 26.08% | 4 of 6 |
| Employer establishments | 20,226 | 18,869.5 | 3 of 6 |
Position among 6 building finishing trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 1st of 6 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 3rd of 6 by employer establishment count and 4th of 6 by payroll share. Payroll equals 25.27 percent of receipts here, 0.81 percentage points below the group median of 26.08 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 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drywall and Insulation Contractors (this page) | $2,857,276 | 25.27% | 20,226 |
| Other Building Finishing Contractors | $1,987,276 | 28.25% | 7,256 |
| Flooring Contractors | $1,380,935 | 19.59% | 17,513 |
| Finish Carpentry Contractors | $1,327,355 | 23.01% | 32,189 |
| Tile and Terrazzo Contractors | $1,161,905 | 26.90% | 10,527 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Other Building Finishing Contractors, Flooring Contractors, Finish Carpentry Contractors and Tile and Terrazzo Contractors. It contains more employer establishments than three of the four categories shown. 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 drywall and insulation contractors, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Drywall and insulation are counted together although they are sold, scheduled and priced differently. A company doing both reports one figure covering two trades with different crews and different suppliers.
The receipts also cannot show whether board is bought by the contractor or supplied by the builder, which changes what the same square footage of work is worth on paper.
Operator lens
- Piece-rate pay rewards volume, not finish. Much of this trade is paid by area rather than by hour, which makes the finishing standard and the inspection process the real quality control.
- Material price moves faster than contracts do. Board and compound prices can move between quote and installation, and contracts without escalation language absorb that difference.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- Who are the builders and how many are there? Most drywall work is sold to other contractors rather than to homeowners, so the customer list is short and the concentration risk is real.
- How is the crew engaged? Employees, piece-rate workers and subcontracted crews carry very different obligations and very different availability.
- What does the punch list history look like? Returning to finish or repair work is unpaid time and it is where thin margins disappear.
- How is material purchased and stored? Ask about supplier terms and damage in handling, because board is bulky, fragile and expensive to move twice.
- How exposed is the business to one development? A single large project can carry a year and can also stop with one phone call.
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 Drywall and Insulation Contractors (NAICS 238310), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Gypsum product manufacturing is a separate Census category from drywall contracting.
Full method, sources and limits
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