Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Environmental Consulting Firm Revenue Benchmark
Environmental consulting, including site assessment and compliance advice.
Average Environmental Consulting Firm Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census publishes total receipts for environmental consulting businesses with paid employees, and the count of establishments behind them. The average below is the ratio.
≈$2,150,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
9,932
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $21.4 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $21.4 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 9,932 employer establishments works out to $2,150,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Environmental Consulting Services (NAICS 541620). Covers environmental consulting, including site assessment and remediation advice, but not the remediation work itself. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
The report itself carries liability: a lender, a buyer or a regulator relies on it, and the consultant carries professional insurance against that reliance. Demand in this field is created by regulation rather than by discretionary spending, which makes it unusually insensitive to the cycles that move other consulting categories. Work arrives as assessments, permits and compliance reporting tied to a property or a facility, often with a statutory deadline attached.
The consulting advice sits here; the remediation work itself is a separate Census category, so a firm that does both may be counted elsewhere. Phase one assessments for property transactions and long running compliance programs sit in the same figure, although one is a fixed-fee measured in weeks and the other a retainer measured in years. Field sampling, laboratory analysis and report writing are billed at different rates inside one engagement, and a firm that subcontracts the laboratory records lower receipts for identical work.
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
Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services, NAICS 5416, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
47.5%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 41.7 to 47.5 percent. This benchmark covers Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services, NAICS 5416, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for environmental consulting businesses on their own: they are 9,932 of the 222,321 employer establishments in that group, about 4 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers technical and field staff, not subcontracted laboratory analysis.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈36% |
Payroll share of receipts, Environmental Consulting Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 36.0 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 scientists, engineers and field staff, and laboratory analysis is often subcontracted.
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 7 consulting practices 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 | $2,153,064 | $2,099,098 | 3 of 7 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 35.71% | 35.71% | 4 of 7 |
| Employer establishments | 9,932 | 10,628 | 5 of 7 |
Position among 7 consulting practices, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 3rd of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 5th of 7 by employer establishment count and 4th of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 35.71 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 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Environmental Consulting Services (this page) | $2,153,064 | 35.71% | 9,932 |
| Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services | $2,099,098 | 30.15% | 25,508 |
| Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services | $2,059,488 | 41.48% | 106,386 |
| Process, Physical Distribution, and Logistics Consulting Services | $2,701,882 | 26.12% | 9,637 |
| Marketing Consulting Services | $1,502,621 | 32.25% | 51,544 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Process, Physical Distribution, and Logistics Consulting Services, and higher revenue than Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services, Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services and Marketing Consulting Services. It contains more employer establishments than one 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 environmental consulting businesses, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
The figure cannot separate advisory work from pass-through laboratory analysis. A firm that runs its own laboratory and one that subcontracts every sample report different receipts for identical professional judgment.
The regulatory calendar that drives demand is absent from receipts. Much of this work exists because a permit, a transaction or a deadline requires it, so demand follows rules rather than the economic cycle.
Operator lens
- The report carries liability long after the invoice. Lenders and buyers rely on these documents for years, which is why professional liability insurance and file discipline are operational matters, not paperwork.
- Fieldwork and analysis have different economics. Sampling is scheduled, weather-dependent and labor heavy; interpretation is where the professional fee sits.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What is the mix of transactional and ongoing work? Site assessments for property deals stop when deals stop; compliance programs continue regardless.
- Which staff hold the qualifications the work requires? Many report types must be signed by a specific licensed professional, and that person is the practice.
- What is the claims and insurance history? Ask about notified circumstances as well as claims, because the tail on this work is long.
- How is laboratory work handled? In-house analysis changes the capital base and the revenue figure; subcontracting changes the margin.
- How dependent is the firm on one regulation? A practice built around a single compliance regime is exposed to a change in that regime.
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 Environmental Consulting Services (NAICS 541620), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Remediation services and testing laboratories are separate Census categories.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.