Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Electrical Contractor Revenue Benchmark

Electrical and other wiring installation contracting.

NAICS 238210, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Electrical Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Combined annual receipts of all electrical and wiring contractors with paid employees, divided by the number of such establishments counted in the 2022 Economic Census. That is the average shown below.

≈$3,070,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

81,249

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $249.2 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $249.2 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 81,249 employer establishments works out to $3,070,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors (NAICS 238210). The category covers electrical contractors together with other wiring installation, including low voltage and data cabling firms. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

This category reaches beyond power wiring into low voltage work: data cabling, fire alarm, security and control systems all sit in the same code. Commercial and industrial projects run to a scale no residential electrician reaches, and both are inside this one average, which lifts revenue per establishment well above what a residential electrician alone would report.

Residential service electricians and large commercial contractors are counted in the same category, and the census data do not separate them.

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

Building Equipment Contractors, NAICS 2382, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

61.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 78.9 percent at 1 year, 71.9 percent at 2 years, 68.3 percent at 3 years, 65.3 percent at 4 years, 61.8 percent at 5 years. 12,093 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 59.4 to 61.8 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 78.9 percent of the starting count2 years: 71.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 68.3 percent of the starting count4 years: 65.3 percent of the starting count5 years: 61.8 percent of the starting count78.971.968.365.361.8Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years12,093 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 62 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 59.4 to 61.8 percent. This benchmark covers Building Equipment Contractors, NAICS 2382, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for electrical contractors on their own: they are 81,249 of the 203,401 employer establishments in that group, about 40 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers licensed electricians and apprentices, not the fixtures, conduit and gear installed on the job.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈28%

Payroll share of receipts, Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 28.0 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. Licensed labor is the core cost, and the payroll share reflects a trade where journeyman and apprentice hours carry most of the work.

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 3 building equipment trades 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$3,067,698$3,067,6982 of 3
Payroll share of receipts27.73%27.73%2 of 3
Employer establishments81,24981,2492 of 3

Position among 3 building equipment trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 2nd of 3 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 3 by employer establishment count and 2nd of 3 by payroll share. Payroll equals 27.73 percent of receipts here, exactly the group median. 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 2 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors (this page)$3,067,69827.73%81,249
Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors$2,600,86227.00%114,427
Other Building Equipment Contractors$5,491,43127.94%7,725

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Other Building Equipment Contractors, and higher revenue than Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors. It contains more employer establishments than one of the two 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 electrical contractors, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

This category holds power wiring alongside low-voltage work: data cabling, alarms, access control and building systems. Those need different training and are sold to different buyers, and the census reports them as one.

New construction and service work are blended here, though they run on different margins. New build arrives through general contractors on their schedule; service work arrives directly and pays faster.

Operator lens

  • Inspection sits between the work and the payment. Work that fails inspection is done twice and paid once, which makes documentation and first-time compliance a financial matter.
  • Material price and lead time move independently. Copper, gear and panels have all risen in price and become slower to obtain, and contracts written without allowance for either movement absorb the difference.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • Who holds the qualifying license? In most states one named individual carries it, and the business cannot operate without them.
  • What is the split between new construction and service? The mix determines both the payment cycle and the exposure to a construction slowdown.
  • How much work is low-voltage? It is a different skill set, a different competitive set and often a different margin.
  • What does the receivables aging look like? Contractors pay slowly and retention is held, so profitable work can still be financially painful.
  • Are there open permits or failed inspections? Both are public records in most jurisdictions, and checking them costs little.

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 Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors (NAICS 238210), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Electrical contracting includes other wiring installation in the same Census code.

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.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.