Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Engineering Firm Revenue Benchmark

Engineering services across civil, mechanical and other disciplines.

NAICS 541330, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Engineering Firm Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Two published totals produce the average below: what engineering firms with paid employees received in 2022, and how many establishments reported that revenue.

≈$4,750,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

64,121

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $304.3 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $304.3 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 64,121 employer establishments works out to $4,750,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Engineering Services (NAICS 541330). Covers engineering services across civil, mechanical, electrical and other disciplines. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Engineering firms report a high average for a professional the professional practices published here. Engineering work attaches to capital projects, so a single infrastructure or industrial contract can carry a multi-year fee, and the establishments doing that work are larger than the professional services average in every dimension the census records.

Every discipline from civil to electrical sits in one category, and project scale varies enormously within it.

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

Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services, NAICS 5413, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

62.0%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 82.4 percent at 1 year, 74.0 percent at 2 years, 69.2 percent at 3 years, 66.0 percent at 4 years, 62.0 percent at 5 years. 6,580 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 58.7 to 66.3 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 82.4 percent of the starting count2 years: 74.0 percent of the starting count3 years: 69.2 percent of the starting count4 years: 66.0 percent of the starting count5 years: 62.0 percent of the starting count82.474.069.266.062.0Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years6,580 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 58.7 to 66.3 percent. This benchmark covers Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services, NAICS 5413, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for engineering firms on their own: they are 64,121 of the 119,256 employer establishments in that group, about 54 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers engineers, designers and technicians billed to projects.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈39%

Payroll share of receipts, Engineering Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 39.0 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 covers licensed engineers and technical staff and takes a large share of receipts.

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 8 architecture and engineering practices 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$4,745,203$1,622,2171 of 8
Payroll share of receipts38.72%38.32%4 of 8
Employer establishments64,1217,674.51 of 8

Position among 8 architecture and engineering practices, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 1st of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 8 by employer establishment count and 4th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 38.72 percent of receipts here, 0.40 percentage points above the group median of 38.32 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 categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Engineering Services (this page)$4,745,20338.72%64,121
Testing Laboratories and Services$3,504,64640.07%7,970
Architectural Services$2,144,76436.46%22,644
Geophysical Surveying and Mapping Services$1,823,93440.87%839
Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services$1,420,49944.23%7,725

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

This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Testing Laboratories and Services, Architectural Services, Geophysical Surveying and Mapping Services and Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services. It contains more employer establishments than all four 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.

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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 Engineering Services (NAICS 541330), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Architectural services are a separate Census category from engineering services.

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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