Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
New Car Dealer Revenue Benchmark
Franchised dealerships selling new vehicles, usually alongside used sales, service and parts.
Average New Car Dealer Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every new car dealer with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$52,769,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
22,483
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $1186.4 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $1186.4 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 22,483 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $52,769,000 per employer establishment. Revenue here is the value of vehicles sold, not the margin on them, which is why the figure is large and the payroll share small.
Scope: New Car Dealers, NAICS 441110. Classified separately in group 4411: 441120 Used Car Dealers. 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
Automobile dealers, NAICS 4411, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
57.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 53.8 to 57.4 percent. This benchmark covers Automobile dealers, NAICS 4411, as a whole, and this category accounts for 22,483 of the 47,427 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.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈8% |
Payroll share of receipts, New Car Dealers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 8.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, one of very low for a staffed business. That follows from what revenue means here rather than from lean staffing: the vehicles themselves dominate receipts.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and the census does not publish the cost of the vehicles, so nothing on this page shows what a dealership keeps.
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 | 51.2 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.3 |
Scale and ownership, New Car Dealers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 51.2 people, and the industry counted 1.3 employer establishments per firm. A dealership is a large staffed site, which the employment figure shows more usefully than the revenue does.
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
New Car Dealers: questions the benchmark cannot answer.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- How much of the gross comes from vehicles and how much from service? Vehicle sales dominate revenue while service and parts often carry the margin, and this page shows only the combined figure.
- What does the floor plan cost? Inventory is financed, and the carrying cost of unsold vehicles moves with interest rates rather than with sales performance.
- What does the manufacturer require? Franchise agreements set facility standards, stocking levels and training obligations, all of which are costs the dealership cannot decline.
- How is used inventory sourced? Trade-ins arrive with the new vehicle business, and how well they are appraised and turned affects the result more than the headline revenue suggests.
- How is customer retention measured? Service visits after the sale are where a dealership earns over the life of a vehicle, and losing them to independent shops changes the economics quietly.
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 dealership rather than each dealer group, so a group with several rooftops contributes one establishment per site.