Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Market Research Firm Revenue Benchmark

Firms that design and run market research and opinion polling, from survey fieldwork to analysis and reporting.

NAICS 541910, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Market Research Firm Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every market research firm with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$5,734,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

4,386

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $25.2 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $25.2 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 4,386 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $5,734,000 per employer establishment. Fieldwork costs, incentives and panel fees are often billed through to clients inside the same receipts line as the firm's own fee.

Scope: Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling, NAICS 541910. Classified separately in group 5419: 541921 Photography Studios, Portrait; 541922 Commercial Photography; 541930 Translation and Interpretation Services, 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 Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

51.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 75.7 percent at 1 year, 66.6 percent at 2 years, 58.8 percent at 3 years, 55.1 percent at 4 years, 51.4 percent at 5 years. 5,799 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 51.4 to 54.8 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 75.7 percent of the starting count2 years: 66.6 percent of the starting count3 years: 58.8 percent of the starting count4 years: 55.1 percent of the starting count5 years: 51.4 percent of the starting count75.766.658.855.151.4Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years5,799 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 51 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 51.4 to 54.8 percent. This benchmark covers Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, as a whole, and this category accounts for 4,386 of the 76,067 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.

MeasureValue
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈34%

Payroll share of receipts, Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 34.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. Analyst and project management time is what a client buys, so the ratio follows staffing against project fees.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to field interviewers engaged as contractors and owner compensation, which matters where fieldwork is routinely subcontracted.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

MeasureValue
Paid employees per employer establishment20.1
Employer establishments per firm1.2

Scale and ownership, Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 20.1 people, and the industry counted 1.2 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

Market Research Firm: what the average leaves out.

Before you rely on this benchmark

  • How much of the receipts are pass-through fieldwork? Whether fieldwork is billed at cost or with a margin changes what a firm keeps from the same headline revenue, sometimes several-fold. A quote that does not separate gross billings from net fee income cannot be compared with one that does.
  • Is the work project based or tracking? A tracking study repeats and funds the year, while ad hoc projects have to be won again each time.
  • Who owns the panel? A firm that buys sample from others has a variable cost where a panel owner has an asset, and the census figure treats them identically.
  • How exposed is the firm to client marketing budgets? Research sits in discretionary budget lines, and spending may be reduced when those budgets tighten.
  • What carries across studies? A firm that rebuilds its approach for each project tends to earn less per hour than one whose instruments and panels carry across studies.
  • Who screens respondent quality? Fraudulent and inattentive responses reach online panels, and the screening that removes them is a cost the client rarely sees itemized.

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 each staffed office rather than each study or client.