Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Fine Arts School Revenue Benchmark
Schools teaching music, dance, art and drama outside the academic system, usually in lessons or classes.
Average Fine Arts School Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every fine arts school with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$419,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
16,398
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $6.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $6.9 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 16,398 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $419,000 per employer establishment. This is a small average by the standards of a fee-based trade, which fits a category built on lesson fees rather than large contracts.
Scope: Fine Arts Schools, NAICS 611610. Classified separately in group 6116: 611620 Sports and Recreation Instruction; 611630 Language Schools; 611691 Exam Preparation and Tutoring, and 2 further codes. 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 July 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Other Schools and Instruction, NAICS 6116, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
58.1%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 53.3 to 58.1 percent. This benchmark covers Other Schools and Instruction, NAICS 6116, as a whole, and this category accounts for 16,398 of the 58,784 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
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 | ≈32% |
Payroll share of receipts, Fine Arts Schools, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 32.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. Teaching hours are the product, so the ratio follows what instructors are paid against what families pay for lessons.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to instructors engaged as contractors and owner compensation, which matters in a trade where teaching staff are frequently contracted rather than employed.
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 | 7.5 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.03 |
Scale and ownership, Fine Arts Schools, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 7.5 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm.
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.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Fine Arts Schools: what the average leaves out.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- How many students continue past the first term? Retention drives much of the economics of lesson teaching. A school that fills in September and empties by November earns far less than its enrollment suggests.
- Are teachers employed or contracted? Contracted teachers do not appear in payroll at all, so two schools of identical size can show very different ratios while paying the same people.
- What does the space cost when nobody is teaching? Studios and practice rooms are rented by the month and used in the late afternoon and evening, so idle hours are paid for and cannot be sold again once passed.
- Does recital and exam income matter? Performance fees, competitions and graded exams are a separate revenue line in many schools and they arrive in a different rhythm from tuition.
- Who owns the student relationship? Where teachers bring their own students, a departing teacher can take the enrollment with them, which is a risk no revenue figure shows.
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.
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 a school with paid staff at a location. A teacher working alone from home is not included, and this trade has a great many of them.