Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Painting Contractor Revenue Benchmark

Interior and exterior painting and wall covering work carried out under contract.

NAICS 238320, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Painting Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The average below comes from two published totals in the 2022 Economic Census: what painting and wall covering contractors took in between them, and how many establishments with paid employees did the work.

≈$870,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

38,153

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $33 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $33 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 38,153 employer establishments works out to $870,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Painting and Wall Covering Contractors (NAICS 238320). Covers painting and wall covering contractors on both residential and commercial work. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Most of the hours on a painting job happen before any color goes on: masking, sanding, patching and priming decide how the finish looks and how long it lasts. Almost nothing is bought and resold here. Paint is cheap relative to the hours needed to prepare a surface and apply it, which is one reason this trade shows a high payroll share among the construction categories on this site and one of the lowest revenue figures per establishment.

Exterior work is weather-dependent in much of the country, which the annual census figure cannot show. Repaint work and new construction work are counted together, although they reach the customer through completely different channels, one directly and one through a builder's schedule.

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 finishing contractors, NAICS 2383, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

55.5%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 77.2 percent at 1 year, 67.4 percent at 2 years, 62.5 percent at 3 years, 59.2 percent at 4 years, 55.5 percent at 5 years. 9,718 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 53.6 to 59.7 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 77.2 percent of the starting count2 years: 67.4 percent of the starting count3 years: 62.5 percent of the starting count4 years: 59.2 percent of the starting count5 years: 55.5 percent of the starting count77.267.462.559.255.5Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years9,718 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 56 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 53.6 to 59.7 percent. This benchmark covers Building finishing contractors, NAICS 2383, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for painting contractors on their own: they are 38,153 of the 125,864 employer establishments in that group, about 30 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers painters and preparation crews, who account for most of what a painting invoice contains.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈30%

Payroll share of receipts, Painting and Wall Covering Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 30.0 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. This is the most labor-intensive trade in the construction set by payroll share, with materials a small part of each invoice. Crew size scales almost linearly with the job here: two painters finish a house appreciably faster than one, which is not true of trades constrained by a single machine or a single licensed installer.

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 6 building finishing trades in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$865,651$1,354,1456 of 6
Payroll share of receipts30.36%26.08%1 of 6
Employer establishments38,15318,869.51 of 6

Position among 6 building finishing trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 6th of 6 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 6 by employer establishment count and 1st of 6 by payroll share. Payroll equals 30.36 percent of receipts here, 4.27 percentage points above the group median of 26.08 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 categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Painting and Wall Covering Contractors (this page)$865,65130.36%38,153
Tile and Terrazzo Contractors$1,161,90526.90%10,527
Finish Carpentry Contractors$1,327,35523.01%32,189
Flooring Contractors$1,380,93519.59%17,513
Other Building Finishing Contractors$1,987,27628.25%7,256

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Tile and Terrazzo Contractors, Finish Carpentry Contractors, Flooring Contractors and Other Building Finishing Contractors. It contains more employer establishments than all four of them. 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.

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 Painting and Wall Covering Contractors (NAICS 238320), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Wall covering installation shares this Census code with painting.

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.