Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Site Preparation Contractor Revenue Benchmark

Excavation, grading and demolition performed under contract before construction begins.

NAICS 238910, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Site Preparation Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Combined receipts of every site preparation contractor with paid employees, divided by the number of those establishments, both as published in the 2022 Economic Census.

≈$3,970,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

39,932

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $158.7 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $158.7 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 39,932 employer establishments works out to $3,970,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Site Preparation Contractors (NAICS 238910). Covers excavation, grading, demolition and other site work performed under contract before construction begins. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

This trade is priced by the machine hour and the cubic yard, which puts it closer to an equipment business than to the finishing trades. An excavator, its operator and the trucking to move spoil are committed before a foundation exists, and that capital shows in revenue per establishment that is high for a specialty trade.

Excavation, grading, demolition and land clearing are counted together, and a firm that only does one of them sits in the same average as one that does all four. Rock, groundwater and contaminated fill are discovered after a price is agreed, which is why change orders are a routine feature of this trade rather than an exception.

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

Other Specialty Trade Contractors, NAICS 2389, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

54.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 76.3 percent at 1 year, 68.9 percent at 2 years, 61.6 percent at 3 years, 58.0 percent at 4 years, 54.8 percent at 5 years. 5,136 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 52.6 to 54.8 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 76.3 percent of the starting count2 years: 68.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 61.6 percent of the starting count4 years: 58.0 percent of the starting count5 years: 54.8 percent of the starting count76.368.961.658.054.8Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years5,136 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 55 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 52.6 to 54.8 percent. This benchmark covers Other Specialty Trade Contractors, NAICS 2389, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for site preparation contractors on their own: they are 39,932 of the 82,257 employer establishments in that group, about 49 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers operators and laborers, not the machines they run or the trucking billed with the job.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈21%

Payroll share of receipts, Site Preparation Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 21.0 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 modest share here because machine time and haulage are invoiced alongside operator hours.

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.

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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 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 Site Preparation Contractors (NAICS 238910), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Heavy civil construction is a separate Census sector from specialty trade contracting.

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.

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