Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Plumbing and HVAC Contractor Revenue Benchmark

Plumbing, heating and air conditioning contracting.

NAICS 238220, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Plumbing and HVAC Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Every plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractor with paid employees reports to the 2022 Economic Census. The figure below divides the combined receipts of those establishments by how many of them there are.

≈$2,600,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

114,427

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $297.6 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $297.6 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 114,427 employer establishments works out to $2,600,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors (NAICS 238220). The category combines plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors in one code, so a plumbing-only business and a mechanical contractor sit in the same average. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Two businesses share this code: the service company that answers calls on existing buildings, and the mechanical contractor that installs systems in new ones. Equipment is a large part of what gets invoiced, since a furnace or condenser is bought and resold inside the job, which lifts receipts without lifting labor in the same proportion.

A plumbing-only shop and a full mechanical contractor are counted together, so the average spans very different capital requirements.

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 Equipment Contractors, NAICS 2382, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

61.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 78.9 percent at 1 year, 71.9 percent at 2 years, 68.3 percent at 3 years, 65.3 percent at 4 years, 61.8 percent at 5 years. 12,093 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 59.4 to 61.8 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 78.9 percent of the starting count2 years: 71.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 68.3 percent of the starting count4 years: 65.3 percent of the starting count5 years: 61.8 percent of the starting count78.971.968.365.361.8Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years12,093 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 62 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 59.4 to 61.8 percent. This benchmark covers Building Equipment Contractors, NAICS 2382, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for plumbing and HVAC contractors on their own: they are 114,427 of the 203,401 employer establishments in that group, about 56 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers technicians, apprentices and dispatch, not the equipment resold inside each installation.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈27%

Payroll share of receipts, Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 27.0 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 here sits near the middle of the trades, with equipment purchases making up a large share of what is invoiced.

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 3 building equipment 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$2,600,862$3,067,6983 of 3
Payroll share of receipts27.00%27.73%3 of 3
Employer establishments114,42781,2491 of 3

Position among 3 building equipment trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 3rd of 3 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 3 by employer establishment count and 3rd of 3 by payroll share. Payroll equals 27.00 percent of receipts here, 0.73 percentage points below the group median of 27.73 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 2 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors (this page)$2,600,86227.00%114,427
Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors$3,067,69827.73%81,249
Other Building Equipment Contractors$5,491,43127.94%7,725

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors and Other Building Equipment Contractors. It contains more employer establishments than both 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.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about plumbing and HVAC contractors, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

Equipment resold inside a job inflates receipts without inflating the work performed. A company that installs furnaces and one that only services them can show similar revenue while the second does far more billable hours per dollar.

The data cannot separate service from installation, and the two behave differently: service work arrives steadily and in small tickets, installation arrives in waves tied to construction and to weather.

Operator lens

  • Maintenance agreements make demand more predictable. Companies that hold maintenance agreements enter every season with known demand, which smooths a year that installation work alone would leave lumpy.
  • Utilization is set by dispatch, not by demand. Adding one call to each truck day raises revenue against the same payroll and fleet, provided the extra work carries comparable value and is actually collected.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • How many maintenance agreements are active? Ask for the count, the renewal rate and whether they transfer, because recurring agreements are the closest thing this trade has to predictable revenue.
  • What is the split between service and installation? The mix tells you how exposed the business is to construction cycles and how much of the revenue is pass-through equipment.
  • Who holds the license? In most states the qualifying license is personal. Establish whether it stays with the business after a sale.
  • How old is the fleet? For companies that own their premises, trucks are usually the next largest capital item after the building, and a fleet due for replacement is a hidden price increase.
  • What does after-hours look like? Emergency work carries premium rates and wears technicians down. Ask how it is staffed and how it is paid.

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 Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors (NAICS 238220), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Plumbing and HVAC share one Census code and cannot be split in this data.

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.