Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Independent Artist, Writer or Performer Revenue Benchmark
Independent artists, writers and performers working for their own account rather than for an employer.
Average Independent Artist Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every independent artist, writer or performer with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$739,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
38,760
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $28.6 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $28.6 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 38,760 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $739,000 per employer establishment. Only those with paid employees appear here, which is a small minority of a field made up mostly of sole practitioners.
Scope: Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers, NAICS 711510. 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
Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers, NAICS 7115, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
48.6%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 46.1 to 48.6 percent. This category is effectively the whole group: 38,760 of the 38,760 employer establishments in it, so the group figure and the category figure describe nearly the same population. 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 | ≈33% |
Payroll share of receipts, Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 33.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. The figure covers staff on the payroll, not what the artist takes for their own work.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to collaborators engaged as contractors and owner compensation, so it says nothing about what an artist earns.
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 | 2.3 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1 |
Scale and ownership, Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 2.3 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm. The average establishment is very small, which is what this field looks like once employees are involved at all.
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
Independent Artist, Writer or Performer: context the census does not publish.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- Does the practice have employees at all? Crossing into employment usually means a studio, a touring operation or a production company rather than a solo career. Treat the figure as describing that step, not the earnings of an artist working alone, who does not appear in this table at all.
- How is income earned across the year? Commissions, performances, royalties and teaching arrive irregularly, and an annual figure smooths a pattern that is anything but smooth.
- Who holds the rights? Ownership of the work determines whether income ends at delivery or continues, and nothing in these figures distinguishes the two.
- What does representation cost? Agents, galleries and managers take a share before anything reaches the artist, and that share is invisible in a revenue total.
- How much unpaid time goes into winning work? Pitching, applying and auditioning consume weeks that never appear as revenue, and they are the real cost of an irregular income.
- How is income smoothed across a year? In project-based work payment may arrive well after delivery, so cash management matters more than the annual total suggests.
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 those with paid employees. The great majority of artists, writers and performers have none and are absent from this page entirely.