Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Nail Salon Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Manicures, pedicures and nail enhancements delivered at stations, often with walk-in service.

NAICS 812113, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Nail Salon Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census carries nail salons as a distinct category and publishes the establishment count and combined receipts that yield the average below.

≈$340,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

33,212

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $11.4 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $11.4 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 33,212 employer establishments works out to $340,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Nail salons (NAICS 812113). Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Nail salons combine station throughput with service add-ons, and typical tickets sit between barbering and full beauty services. The employer-only scope excludes booth renters and home-based technicians, which are a meaningful part of this trade.

Supply costs and ventilation compliance are the hidden lines here; product per service is small but constant, and air handling upgrades arrive as lump sums. Gel systems and dip powders shifted service mix in ways a twenty-year-old rule of thumb will miss.

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

Personal care services, NAICS 8121, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

57.0%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five years on, this industry group counted about 57 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 52.8 to 57.0 percent. This benchmark covers Personal care services, NAICS 8121, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for nail salons on their own: they are 33,212 of the 155,827 employer establishments in that group, about 21 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

The verified share below shows annual payroll as a share of receipts; it does not include product supplies, contractor payments or owner compensation.

Cost line	Share of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States	≈32%

Payroll share of receipts, Nail salons, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 32.0 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. Station count and technician hours set the practical ceiling; add-on services move the ticket rather than the throughput.

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 5 beauty and personal care categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

Measure	This category	Group median	Rank
Revenue per employer establishment	$342,237	$342,237	3 of 5
Payroll share of receipts	31.92%	35.47%	4 of 5
Employer establishments	33,212	29,692	2 of 5

Position among 5 beauty and personal care categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 3rd of 5 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 5 by employer establishment count and 4th of 5 by payroll share. Payroll equals 31.92 percent of receipts here, 3.55 percentage points below the group median of 35.47 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 category	Revenue per establishment	Payroll share	Establishments
Nail salons (this page)	$342,237	31.92%	33,212
Beauty Salons	$307,752	44.28%	83,392
Barber Shops	$236,749	47.68%	7,025
Other Personal Care Services	$460,633	35.47%	29,692
Diet and Weight Reducing Centers	$951,916	15.30%	2,506

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Other Personal Care Services and Diet and Weight Reducing Centers, and higher revenue than Beauty Salons and Barber Shops. It contains more employer establishments than three 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.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about nail salons, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

Ventilation and chemical handling are regulated in ways that vary by state and city, and none of that appears in a receipts figure. A salon that meets the current standard and one that does not can look identical in the data.

Technician licensing status never appears in receipts. Service availability depends on who is qualified to perform which treatment, and that is a staffing constraint rather than a demand one.

Operator lens

Bookable hours per station cap what a salon can sell. Every station has a fixed number of bookable hours, so the menu mix between quick services and long ones decides daily capacity.
Product cost is small; chair time is the scarce input. Materials are a minor line against labor, which means pricing should follow the minutes a treatment consumes.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

Are the technicians licensed and staying? Ask about qualifications held and how long each person has been there, because both limit what the salon can sell.
What does the ventilation system actually do? Extraction is a health obligation and an expensive retrofit if it is missing or undersized.
What is the booking pattern across the week? Weekend concentration is normal, but the size of the gap determines whether weekday staff can be justified.
How is inventory controlled? Product used per service is small individually and adds up quietly across a year.
What is the inspection history? Sanitation records are public in many jurisdictions and are the easiest due diligence available.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

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 Nail salons (NAICS 812113), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Home-based technicians fall outside the employer scope entirely.

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.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.