Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Electronics and Appliance Store Revenue Benchmark
An electronics and appliance store sells televisions, computers, phones, audio equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances and related accessories, often with delivery, installation and extended warranty services attached. High ticket prices produce large revenue on thin product margins, so services and financing often carry the result.
Average Electronics and Appliance Store Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every electronics and appliance retailer with paid employees, from independent appliance dealers to national electronics chains, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of stores gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.
≈$7,058,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
24,833
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $175.3 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $175.3 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 24,833 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $7,058,000 per employer establishment.
Scope: Electronics and Appliance Retailers, NAICS 449210. The category covers retailers of consumer electronics, household appliances, computers and related equipment. Electronics repair shops and appliance rental businesses are counted in separate categories. 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
Five-Year Survival in the Retail Sector Sector-level
Federal data does not track survival for electronics and appliance stores specifically. The honest closest measure is the sector that contains them: Retail Trade (NAICS 44-45). Here is the most recent fully observed five-year cohort.
59.8 percent of Retail Trade establishments opened in the year ended March 2020 were still operating five years later. Five-year survival was similar across these two consecutive cohorts: 60.7 percent and 59.8 percent.
Read this as sector base rates, not as a promise for this specific trade. The sector contains many business types with different economics, and survival for any one of them can sit above or below the curve. Electronics retailing has been reshaped by online competition and by manufacturers selling direct, and the survival of a store depends on service and installation revenue that the sector curve does not isolate.
Source US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, Table 7 · Scope Retail Trade sector, national · Observed through March 2025
Source and definition
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈7% |
Payroll share of receipts, Electronics and Appliance Retailers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 7.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share that follows from high ticket prices: a single appliance or television carries a large sum through the register with a small labor cost attached to the sale.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and the census does not publish cost of goods, so nothing on this page shows what a store keeps after paying manufacturers and distributors.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 10.5 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.43 |
Scale and ownership, Electronics and Appliance Retailers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 10.5 people, and the industry counted 1.4 employer establishments per firm. The establishments per firm figure shows a category shared between multi-store chains and single independent dealers, and the staff count includes the delivery and installation crews that many stores run alongside the sales floor.
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.
Explore More on BusinessNES
Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.
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
Electronics and Appliance Store: where the result hides when product margins are thin.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- What does the store earn beyond the product? Delivery, installation, haul-away, repair plans and financing can matter as much to the result as the margin on the goods themselves. A store that sells the same appliances without those services can report similar receipts and keep far less.
- Which manufacturers set the terms? Minimum advertised prices, allocation of popular models and buying group membership shape what an independent dealer can offer and at what margin. Those relationships are the core of the business and appear nowhere in a census table.
- How exposed is the store to online prices? Shoppers compare prices on phones while standing in the aisle, and for identical models the store must match or justify a premium through service. The share of sales in products where the store is not competing purely on price decides the outcome.
- What does inventory obsolescence cost? Electronics lose value quickly as new models arrive, and appliances tie up floor space and capital in large, slow-moving units. The write-downs and clearance sales that follow are absorbed in the margin and do not appear in receipts.
- Is there a service department? In-house repair and installation technicians generate revenue, warranty work and customer loyalty, but they need vehicles, parts stock and training. Whether a store has one changes its payroll, its scale and its resilience.
- Who pays for returns and damaged goods? Large items damaged in delivery, returned after use or replaced under warranty create costs that fall on the store unless supplier terms say otherwise. Handling those cases well is a quiet part of the trade that the benchmark cannot show.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each store with paid staff. Repair shops and rental businesses for the same goods are counted in separate categories.
The survival curve is a sector-level series from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and describes the whole Retail Trade sector, not this business type on its own.