Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
New Single-Family Housing Contractor Revenue Benchmark
A new single-family housing contractor builds custom and contract homes for owners who hold the land, managing design coordination, permits, subcontractors and construction from foundation to finish. Subcontracted trades, project-based revenue and a market tied to mortgage rates and land availability define a business that carries large receipts on a small direct staff.
Average Single-Family Housing Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every new single-family housing contractor with paid employees, meaning general contractors, design-build firms and construction managers who build new houses for an owner rather than for sale on their own land, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of contractors gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.
≈$2,161,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
54,490
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $117.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $117.8 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 54,490 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $2,161,000 per employer establishment.
Scope: New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders), NAICS 236115. The Census category is New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders), which counts general contractors, design-build firms and construction managers responsible for building new single-family houses for an owner. Builders who construct homes for sale on their own land, remodelers and multifamily contractors are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 2361: 236116 New Multifamily Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders); 236117 New Housing For-Sale Builders; 236118 Residential Remodelers. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026
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, and this category accounts for 54,490 of the 205,642 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈11% |
Payroll share of receipts, New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders), United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 11.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share because most of the work on a house is done by subcontracted trades and most of the receipts pay for materials and those subcontractors rather than the contractor's own crew.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes subcontractor payments, lumber and materials, permits and insurance, which together make up the bulk of what a contractor spends on a home.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 4.2 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1 |
Scale and ownership, New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders), United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 4.2 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm. A contractor of that size employs a small office and supervision staff and relies on subcontractors for the trades, and the establishments per firm figure shows a trade made up almost entirely of single-location businesses.
These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.
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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.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
New Single-Family Housing Contractor: what a subcontracted, project-based trade looks like in a yearly average.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- How many homes were built that year? Revenue follows the number and size of homes completed, and a custom builder finishing a few large houses and a contract builder finishing many modest ones can report similar receipts. Volume and price per home are not published in this table.
- How much of the revenue passes to subcontractors? Framing, electrical, plumbing, roofing and finishes are usually subcontracted, so a large part of each contract flows straight through to other trades. Receipts describe the size of the projects far more than the size of the contractor.
- Cost-plus or fixed price? Cost-plus contracts pass material price swings to the owner while fixed-price contracts leave them with the builder, and material prices can move sharply within a single project. The contract structure decides who bears the risk that a revenue figure hides.
- Where are interest rates and land supply? New home demand moves with mortgage rates, and the availability and price of buildable lots limit what a contractor can start. Mortgage rates can move sharply from one year to the next, so the figure is a snapshot of a cyclical trade.
- Who carries the warranty? Builders may carry contractual or statutory warranty obligations after handover, so callbacks, defects and disputes can create costs after the original revenue has been recorded. Warranty exposure is a defining cost that appears nowhere in receipts.
- How is the contractor different from a for-sale builder? Builders who develop lots and sell finished homes are counted in a separate category and carry land and inventory risk that a contract builder does not. This figure describes contractors building for owners, not speculative homebuilding.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each contractor with paid staff at a physical office. A builder working alone with subcontractors and no employees is not counted, and for-sale builders, remodelers and multifamily contractors are counted in separate categories.