Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Hardware Store Revenue Benchmark

Hardware retailers selling tools, fasteners and building supplies.

NAICS 444140, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Hardware Store Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

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

≈$2,510,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

16,434

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $41.3 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $41.3 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 16,434 employer establishments works out to $2,510,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Hardware Retailers (NAICS 444140). Covers hardware retailers; home centers and building material dealers are separate categories. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

The independent hardware store survives on the errand a big box cannot serve well: one part, today, with someone who knows which one. Depth of assortment in small quantities and staff who can answer a question carry much of the proposition, and neither shows up in a revenue figure.

Hardware stores are counted separately from home centers and lumber yards, which are far larger operations. Thousands of low value parts must each be findable, which makes shelf discipline a daily operation rather than a quarterly one.

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

Building material and supplies dealers, NAICS 4441, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

71.5%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 90.0 percent at 1 year, 83.6 percent at 2 years, 77.8 percent at 3 years, 74.2 percent at 4 years, 71.5 percent at 5 years. 1,978 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 65.7 to 71.5 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 90.0 percent of the starting count2 years: 83.6 percent of the starting count3 years: 77.8 percent of the starting count4 years: 74.2 percent of the starting count5 years: 71.5 percent of the starting count90.083.677.874.271.5Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years1,978 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 72 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 65.7 to 71.5 percent. This benchmark covers Building material and supplies dealers, NAICS 4441, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for hardware stores on their own: they are 16,434 of the 59,205 employer establishments in that group, about 28 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers counter staff whose product knowledge is much of what the store sells.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈13%

Payroll share of receipts, Hardware Retailers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 13.0 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 counter and stock staff, with inventory breadth the main capital commitment.

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.

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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 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 Hardware Retailers (NAICS 444140), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Home centers and building material dealers have their own Census categories.

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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