Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Roofing Contractor Revenue Benchmark
Roof installation, replacement and repair contracting.
Average Roofing Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
Combined receipts of every roofing contractor with paid employees, divided by the number of those establishments, both as published in the 2022 Economic Census.
≈$2,850,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
24,552
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $69.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $69.9 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 24,552 employer establishments works out to $2,850,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Roofing Contractors (NAICS 238160). Covers roofing installation and repair, including flat and steep slope work. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Fall protection governs how this trade works in a way it governs no other: harnesses, anchors and guardrails are set up before the first bundle is carried up, and they come down last. A roof is sold as one large ticket rather than many small ones, and the material is a substantial part of what the customer pays for. Replacement work also arrives in bursts after storms, so a single year can look very different from the one before it in the same market.
Storm cycles move demand between years and regions, which a single national average for 2022 cannot show. Tear-off and disposal are billed inside the same contract as the new roof, and landfill fees vary enough between markets to move the total noticeably. Three different products also sit in this one category: asphalt shingle work on houses, standing seam metal, and single-ply membrane on flat commercial decks. They need different crews, different equipment and different insurance, and a contractor who does one of them well often does not touch the other 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
Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors, NAICS 2381, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
58.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 55.5 to 59.3 percent. This benchmark covers Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors, NAICS 2381, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for roofing contractors on their own: they are 24,552 of the 104,198 employer establishments in that group, about 24 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers roofing crews, not the shingles, membrane and underlayment supplied with each job.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈19% |
Payroll share of receipts, Roofing Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 19.0 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 takes a small share of receipts, consistent with material being a large part of each invoice. Production is measured in squares laid per day and the work usually stops in rain or high wind, so a crew's paid hours and its billable hours diverge more here than in trades that can move indoors.
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 8 foundation and exterior trades 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 | $2,847,271 | $2,492,816 | 3 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 19.25% | 23.39% | 7 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 24,552 | 10,956 | 1 of 8 |
Position among 8 foundation and exterior trades, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 3rd of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 8 by employer establishment count and 7th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 19.25 percent of receipts here, 4.14 percentage points below the group median of 23.39 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 category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofing Contractors (this page) | $2,847,271 | 19.25% | 24,552 |
| Glass and Glazing Contractors | $2,766,442 | 23.97% | 6,825 |
| Poured Concrete Foundation and Structure Contractors | $3,407,351 | 22.82% | 23,110 |
| Framing Contractors | $2,219,190 | 18.85% | 13,125 |
| Other Foundation, Structure, and Building Exterior Contractors | $1,848,432 | 26.53% | 5,740 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Poured Concrete Foundation and Structure Contractors, and higher revenue than Glass and Glazing Contractors, Framing Contractors and Other Foundation, Structure, and Building Exterior 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.
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about roofing contractors, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Storm cycles move this trade between years and between regions, and one national annual figure flattens all of it. A market that had a hail season and one that did not will look the same in the data and nothing alike in practice.
The census also cannot tell you who paid. Insurance funded replacement follows a claims process with its own timing and its own approvals, which is a different business from a homeowner deciding to replace a roof.
Operator lens
- Crew safety is an operating cost, not a policy document. Fall protection setup consumes time on every job and is a core safety and compliance requirement.
- Weather converts fixed cost into idle cost. Crews are paid and equipment is financed whether or not the day is workable, which is why scheduling depth matters.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What is the mix of insurance and retail work? Each has a different sales process, a different collection cycle and a different exposure to weather.
- Which product types does the company actually install? Shingle, metal and flat membrane work need different crews and different certifications.
- What manufacturer certifications are held? These control which warranties can be offered and are tied to the company, sometimes to individuals.
- What does the workers' compensation record look like? Rates in this trade are high and the experience modifier is a direct cost.
- How is disposal handled and priced? Tear-off volume and landfill fees vary locally and are easy to underestimate in a quote.
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 Roofing Contractors (NAICS 238160), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Roofing materials manufacturing is a separate Census category from roofing contracting. Manufacturer certification programs govern who may issue the longer material warranties, which is a commercial arrangement the census data do not record.
Full method, sources and limits
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