Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Residential Remodeler Revenue Benchmark
General remodeling and additions on existing homes.
Average Residential Remodeler Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census records the combined receipts of residential remodeling businesses with paid employees and how many establishments reported them. The average below is one divided by the other.
≈$1,010,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
128,187
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $129.1 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $129.1 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 128,187 employer establishments works out to $1,010,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Residential Remodelers (NAICS 236118). Census counts establishments whose primary work is remodeling and additions on existing homes, including general remodelers who subcontract the trades. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
A general remodeler usually signs for the whole job and then buys most of it back out: framing, electrical, plumbing and finishes are commonly subcontracted, so the receipts recorded here include money that passes through to other trades. That makes this a wide revenue figure, because a remodeler bills subcontracted work through the same receipts line as its own labor.
Receipts include subcontracted work billed through the remodeler, so the figure is not a measure of the work performed in-house. The Census data do not separate the two.
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
Residential Building Construction, NAICS 2361, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
47.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 42.7 to 48.1 percent. This benchmark covers Residential Building Construction, NAICS 2361, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for residential remodelers on their own: they are 128,187 of the 205,642 employer establishments in that group, about 62 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers the remodeler's own crew and office, not the subcontractors invoiced through the job.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈18% |
Payroll share of receipts, Residential Remodelers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 18.0 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. The payroll share here is small for a construction business, which is consistent with a model that buys trade labor rather than employing all of it.
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 residential building construction 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 | $1,007,242 | $8,373,955 | 4 of 4 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 18.09% | 9.79% | 1 of 4 |
| Employer establishments | 128,187 | 36,727.5 | 1 of 4 |
Position among 4 residential building construction categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 4th of 4 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 4 by employer establishment count and 1st of 4 by payroll share. Payroll equals 18.09 percent of receipts here, 8.30 percentage points above the group median of 9.79 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential Remodelers (this page) | $1,007,242 | 18.09% | 128,187 |
| New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders) | $2,161,453 | 11.26% | 54,490 |
| New Housing For-Sale Builders | $14,586,457 | 5.88% | 18,965 |
| New Multifamily Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders) | $19,463,013 | 8.31% | 4,000 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders), New Housing For-Sale Builders and New Multifamily Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders). It contains more employer establishments than all three 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 residential remodelers, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
The receipts here include work bought back out to trades, so a remodeler who subcontracts everything and one who self-performs half the job can report the same revenue while running completely different businesses.
Nothing in the data shows the backlog. In remodeling, the signed work waiting to start is a better description of the company's health than the revenue it recorded last year.
Operator lens
- Cash flow gaps can end a remodeler even while margins look acceptable on paper, and often both problems arrive together. Deposits, draw schedules and supplier terms decide whether a profitable job is survivable while it is being built.
- The low payroll share above is a structural signal. It reflects a model that buys trade labor rather than employing it, which lowers fixed cost and raises dependence on subcontractor availability.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What does the backlog look like and is it signed? Ask for contracted work by start date, not for a pipeline of conversations.
- How are change orders handled? Change orders are where remodeling margin is won or lost, and a company without a written process usually absorbs them.
- Which trades are reliable and are they exclusive? A remodeler is only as good as the electricians and plumbers who answer the phone, and those relationships rarely transfer automatically.
- What is the warranty and callback record? Ask how long after completion the company is still returning to a job, and who pays for it.
- Where does the work come from? Referral-driven companies enjoy low acquisition cost, and many run without a formal marketing system, an advantage that lasts until the owner leaves.
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 Residential Remodelers (NAICS 236118), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. New single family construction is a separate Census category from remodeling.
Full method, sources and limits
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