Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Thrift and Used Merchandise Store Revenue Benchmark
A thrift store or used merchandise store resells secondhand clothing, furniture, books and household goods, whether donated, bought from the public or taken on consignment, and earns on the gap between a low acquisition cost and the resale price. Sorting, pricing and display labor replaces the supplier invoices that a conventional store depends on.
Average Thrift Store Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every used merchandise retailer with paid employees, including thrift stores, consignment shops and antique shops, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of stores gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.
≈$1,145,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
21,619
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $24.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $24.8 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 21,619 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $1,145,000 per employer establishment.
Scope: Used Merchandise Retailers, NAICS 459510. The category covers retailers of used merchandise, including thrift stores, consignment shops, antique shops and secondhand book and clothing stores. Used car dealers and pawnshops are counted in separate categories. 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
Five-Year Survival in the Retail Sector Sector-level
Federal data does not track survival for thrift and used merchandise stores specifically. The honest closest measure is the sector that contains them: Retail Trade (NAICS 44-45). Here is the most recent fully observed five-year cohort.
59.8 percent of Retail Trade establishments opened in the year ended March 2020 were still operating five years later. Five-year survival was similar across these two consecutive cohorts: 60.7 percent and 59.8 percent.
Read this as sector base rates, not as a promise for this specific trade. The sector contains many business types with different economics, and survival for any one of them can sit above or below the curve. Donation flows and consignment terms move with the local economy, and a store that depends on them can lose its supply without losing its customers.
Source US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, Table 7 · Scope Retail Trade sector, national · Observed through March 2025
Source and definition
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 | ≈23% |
Payroll share of receipts, Used Merchandise Retailers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 23.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a modest share that sits above most other retail categories because used goods must be sorted, cleaned, priced and displayed by hand before they can be sold.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes what a store pays for stock or returns to consignors, which is a cost the census does not report.
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 | 10.5 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.41 |
Scale and ownership, Used Merchandise Retailers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 10.5 people, and the industry counted 1.4 employer establishments per firm. A resale store needs people on the sales floor and in the sorting room, which explains a staff count well above a small boutique, and the establishments per firm figure shows that charity chains and multi-store operators account for a meaningful part of this category.
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
Thrift and Used Merchandise Store: why supply, not demand, is the question to ask first.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- Where does the merchandise come from? Donated stock, bought stock and consigned stock produce very different cost structures, and a single store may use all three. A donation-fed nonprofit thrift store and a consignment boutique can report similar receipts while keeping very different amounts.
- Is the operator a charity or a commercial business? Nonprofit thrift chains appear in the same census category as for-profit resellers, and their goals, tax position and labor models differ. The average on this page mixes both, so it describes the category rather than either model on its own.
- How fast does the stock turn? Used goods that do not sell within a few weeks tie up floor space that could hold fresher donations, and markdown cycles decide how much of the sorting labor turns into revenue. Turnover speed is a central operating number that a revenue total cannot show.
- What does processing cost per item? Sorting, testing, cleaning and tagging happen before anything reaches the floor, and much of the intake is discarded or sold as salvage. Labor per item sold can be high even when the goods themselves cost nothing.
- Does the store sell online as well? Rare books, branded clothing and collectibles often fetch more through online listings than on a local rack, and a store that channels them online changes its labor mix and shipping costs. The census counts the receipts wherever they were earned.
- Who else sells the same goods? Online marketplaces, garage sales and apps for peer-to-peer resale compete with a physical store for the same items and buyers. Local supply and competition shape a store far more than a national average can capture.
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 store with paid staff. Volunteer-run charity shops with no employees and online-only resellers working alone are not counted here.
The survival curve is a sector-level series from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and describes the whole Retail Trade sector, not this business type on its own.