Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Framing Contractor Revenue Benchmark

Structural framing in wood and light metal, carried out under contract.

NAICS 238130, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Framing Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census publishes what framing contractors with paid employees received in total and how many establishments there were. One divided by the other gives the average below.

≈$2,220,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

13,125

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $29.1 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $29.1 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 13,125 employer establishments works out to $2,220,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Framing Contractors (NAICS 238130). Covers structural framing in wood and light metal, not finish carpentry or structural steel erection. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Nothing else can proceed until a framing inspection passes, which makes this trade a scheduling bottleneck for every contractor that follows it. Framing is the fastest visible progress on a house and the hardest to pause once started, since a partly framed structure is exposed to weather. Crews are priced per square foot of floor area rather than per hour, which ties this trade's revenue to housing starts more directly than any finishing trade.

Wood framing and light gauge metal framing are one category, though they serve different building types. Lumber packages are frequently bought by the builder and delivered to the site, so two framers with identical crews can report very different receipts depending on who purchases the material.

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

Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors, NAICS 2381, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

58.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 77.2 percent at 1 year, 68.5 percent at 2 years, 64.3 percent at 3 years, 62.1 percent at 4 years, 58.4 percent at 5 years. 6,979 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 55.5 to 59.3 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 77.2 percent of the starting count2 years: 68.5 percent of the starting count3 years: 64.3 percent of the starting count4 years: 62.1 percent of the starting count5 years: 58.4 percent of the starting count77.268.564.362.158.4Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years6,979 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 58 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 55.5 to 59.3 percent. This benchmark covers Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors, NAICS 2381, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for framing contractors on their own: they are 13,125 of the 104,198 employer establishments in that group, about 13 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers framing crews, whose hours are the product this trade sells.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈19%

Payroll share of receipts, Framing Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 19.0 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 takes a small share of receipts, which may reflect subcontractor payments, prefabricated components, or contracts in which material value passes through receipts. The census ratio does not identify which of those explains the result. Crews here are larger than in any finishing trade, since a wall goes up with several people lifting at once. Prefabricated roof trusses and wall panels arrive on a truck ready to set, which moves hours out of the crew and into a factory without changing what the contract is worth, so two framers with the same revenue can employ very different numbers of people.

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 foundation and exterior 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$2,219,190$2,492,8165 of 8
Payroll share of receipts18.85%23.39%8 of 8
Employer establishments13,12510,9564 of 8

Position among 8 foundation and exterior trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 5th of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 4th of 8 by employer establishment count and 8th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 18.85 percent of receipts here, 4.54 percentage points below the group median of 23.39 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
Framing Contractors (this page)$2,219,19018.85%13,125
Other Foundation, Structure, and Building Exterior Contractors$1,848,43226.53%5,740
Glass and Glazing Contractors$2,766,44223.97%6,825
Roofing Contractors$2,847,27119.25%24,552
Masonry Contractors$1,581,07825.88%18,085

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Glass and Glazing Contractors and Roofing Contractors, and higher revenue than Other Foundation, Structure, and Building Exterior Contractors and Masonry Contractors. It contains more employer establishments than two 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.

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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 Framing Contractors (NAICS 238130), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Finish carpentry is a separate Census category from framing. Structural steel erection is a separate Census category from wood and light metal framing.

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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