Census CBP 2023 · NAICS 812112
How many hair salons are there in the US?
The size of the US salon industry, counted two ways: salons with staff and salon businesses without.
- With employees84,176establishments
- Without employees838,264businesses
- Employees391,064in the employer half
- Annual payroll$12.4 billionemployer half
Nonemployer salon businesses outnumber employer salons roughly ten to one, and they still turn over twice the payroll of the employer side. The average US salon is one person with a chair, not a shop floor.
Businesses with staff, and businesses without
These are two different federal surveys covering two different universes, and adding them together without saying so is the most common way this data gets misquoted. They are kept separate here on purpose.
| Measure | Employer | Nonemployer |
|---|---|---|
| Businesses | 84,176 | 838,264 |
| People employed | 391,064 | None, by definition |
| Average staff each | 4.6 | Zero |
| Payroll and receipts | $12.4 billion | $25.5 billion |
| Source | Census CBP 2023 | Census NES 2023 |
beauty salons with employees are 1.007 per cent of all 8,361,342 US establishments with employees
The five states with the most beauty salons
| State | Establishments with employees |
|---|---|
| California | 8,733 |
| Florida | 7,534 |
| New York | 7,124 |
| Texas | 5,740 |
| Pennsylvania | 4,846 |
Employer establishments only. The nonemployer side is not published by state at this level of detail, and in most of these trades it is the larger half, so treat this table as a ranking rather than a census of the trade.
Beauty Salons
Counted here
Hair salons, unisex salons, hairdressing and cosmetology services, and combined hair and beauty shops.
Counted somewhere else
Barber shops (812111), nail-only salons (812113) and day spas, which Census codes elsewhere.
NAICS 812112 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about beauty salons
The average American salon is one person with a chair, not a shop floor, and the federal data says so twice over.
Nonemployer salon businesses outnumber employer salons by roughly ten to one, and the nonemployer side turns over about twice the payroll of the employer side. Those are two different measures and they are not directly comparable, but the direction is unambiguous: the self employed half of this industry is the larger half on both counts that Census publishes.
The employer half is still substantial in absolute terms. Salons with staff pass one per cent of every American establishment with employees, which puts hairdressing among the most common kinds of business in the country, and they average under five employees each. There is no large employer in this industry to speak of; it is eighty thousand small ones.
The code excludes barber shops, nail only salons and day spas, each of which Census counts elsewhere. That matters when comparing this figure to a trade body number, because trade bodies routinely count all four together and describe the result as the salon industry.
An industry of one and two person businesses is an industry where nobody has a marketing department and everybody has a phone. The advantage available is consistency: an honest pair, shot in the same corner under the same light, published on a schedule almost nobody in this trade keeps.
Every figure quoted above appears in the tables on this page or is arithmetic on them. Nothing here forecasts, values a business or suggests a price, because none of the three is measurable from a business count.
Where these numbers came from
Public domain US federal statistics, fetched by hand and baked into this site rather than called at build time. If you quote a figure from this page, cite the agency rather than this site, and use the wording below.
US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2023, United States, NAICS 812112 Beauty Salons. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts establishments with at least one paid employee, measured in the week of 12 March 2023. A business with no employees is counted by Nonemployer Statistics instead, not here.
US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics, 2023, United States, NAICS 812112. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts businesses with no paid employees and at least $1,000 in annual receipts. Sole traders, single-van operators and self-employed contractors land here.
What these workers are paid
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How many hair salons are there in the US?
- Census County Business Patterns counted 84,176 beauty salons with at least one paid employee in 2023, employing 391,064 people on a payroll of $12.4 billion. Nonemployer Statistics counted a further 838,264 businesses with no employees, turning over $25.5 billion. NAICS code 812112.
- Why are there two different numbers?
- Because they measure two different universes. County Business Patterns counts establishments with at least one paid employee. Nonemployer Statistics counts businesses with no employees and at least a thousand dollars of annual receipts. Together they cover every US business, and adding them without saying so would be misleading, so this page keeps them apart.
- What else is inside this code?
- Hair salons, unisex salons, hairdressing and cosmetology services, and combined hair and beauty shops. What it excludes: barber shops (812111), nail-only salons (812113) and day spas, which Census codes elsewhere.
- What does this count tell somebody running one of these businesses?
- The average American salon is one person with a chair, not a shop floor, and the federal data says so twice over. An industry of one and two person businesses is an industry where nobody has a marketing department and everybody has a phone. The advantage available is consistency: an honest pair, shot in the same corner under the same light, published on a schedule almost nobody in this trade keeps.
- How current is this?
- 2023 is the most recent County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics release published by the Census Bureau. Both were fetched and baked into this site on 1 August 2026. This page makes no live API call.
Numbers persuade nobody. The pair does.
Every trade on this page sells the same way: a photograph of the problem beside a photograph of the result. Take the two, and Before and After Video Maker turns them into a 1080p video, a looping GIF or a still.