Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Photography Studio Revenue Benchmark
Portrait photography studios serving individuals and families.
Average Photography Studio Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts portrait photography studios with paid employees and publishes what they received between them. The average below follows from those two numbers.
≈$380,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
10,849
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $4.1 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $4.1 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 10,849 employer establishments works out to $380,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Photography Studios, Portrait (NAICS 541921). Covers portrait photography studios; commercial photography is a separate Census category. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
The average here is small even for a professional practice, and the population explains much of it: portrait work is dominated by people operating alone, so the studios that do employ staff are still small businesses selling sessions one at a time. Sittings are also seasonal in a way that professional services rarely are, clustering around school years and holidays.
Commercial photography for businesses is a separate Census category, and photographers without employees are outside this population entirely. Print sales and digital delivery are counted together, and the shift between them has changed what a session is worth without changing the number of sessions.
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
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
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
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. It is not a survival rate for portrait photography studios on their own: they are 10,849 of the 76,067 employer establishments in that group, about 14 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers photographers and studio staff, the cost the census measures behind a sitting.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈28% |
Payroll share of receipts, Photography Studios, Portrait, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 28.0 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. Payroll covers photographers and studio staff, with little material cost in each sale.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 4 other professional and technical 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 | $381,751 | $1,002,655 | 4 of 4 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 27.83% | 30.36% | 3 of 4 |
| Employer establishments | 10,849 | 8,097 | 2 of 4 |
Position among 4 other professional and technical categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 4th of 4 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 4 by employer establishment count and 3rd of 4 by payroll share. Payroll equals 27.83 percent of receipts here, 2.53 percentage points below the group median of 30.36 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 3 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photography Studios, Portrait (this page) | $381,751 | 27.83% | 10,849 |
| Commercial Photography | $492,405 | 25.96% | 5,345 |
| All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | $1,512,906 | 32.88% | 18,510 |
| Translation and Interpretation Services | $2,402,987 | 33.29% | 2,851 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Commercial Photography, All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services and Translation and Interpretation Services. It contains more employer establishments than two of the three 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 portrait photography studios, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
The population here is unusual: most people who do this work have no employees and sit outside these figures entirely. What remains is the staffed studio, which is a different business from a photographer working alone.
Whether a studio sells sessions, prints or commercial licenses is indistinguishable in receipts. Session fees, print sales and digital files have moved in different directions over the last decade, and two studios with the same revenue may earn it in opposite ways.
Operator lens
- Sessions consume studio and editing time in blocks. Capacity is therefore counted in bookable slots rather than in marketing reach, and the editing hours are the part most often left out of the estimate.
- Editing time is invisible and paid for anyway. Post-production often exceeds shooting time, which is why pricing built only on the session underprices the work.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What is the booking pattern across the year? School seasons, holidays and wedding dates concentrate demand in ways an annual figure hides.
- What is the split between session fees and product sales? Studios that sell prints and albums have inventory and fulfillment; those selling files do not.
- Who owns the archive and the client list? Past work is both a marketing asset and a source of repeat orders.
- What is the studio lease and could the work be done elsewhere? Some of this trade is location dependent and some of it is not, and the rent should match.
- How dependent is the business on one photographer's style? Clients book a look as much as a service, and the look may not transfer.
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 Photography Studios, Portrait (NAICS 541921), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Commercial and industrial photography is counted separately from portrait studios.
Full method, sources and limits
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