Census CBP 2023 · NAICS 561740
How many carpet cleaning companies are there in the US?
One of the cleanest NAICS mappings on this site: a single code that means exactly what the trade calls itself.
- With employees6,673establishments
- Without employees33,156businesses
- Employees36,157in the employer half
- Annual payroll$1.5 billionemployer half
Small on both sides of the count. Fewer than 7,000 companies with staff, and the average one runs a crew of five. This is a trade of owner-operated vans.
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 | 6,673 | 33,156 |
| People employed | 36,157 | None, by definition |
| Average staff each | 5.4 | Zero |
| Payroll and receipts | $1.5 billion | $1.2 billion |
| Source | Census CBP 2023 | Census NES 2023 |
carpet cleaning companies with employees are 0.080 per cent of all 8,361,342 US establishments with employees
The five states with the most carpet cleaning companies
| State | Establishments with employees |
|---|---|
| California | 731 |
| Florida | 638 |
| Texas | 405 |
| Illinois | 296 |
| New York | 264 |
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.
Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning Services
Counted here
Carpet cleaning, rug cleaning and upholstery cleaning, on site or at a plant.
Counted somewhere else
General janitorial contracts that happen to include carpet work, which fall under 561720.
NAICS 561740 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about carpet cleaning companies
Small on both sides of the count, and one of the two trades here where the nonemployer half outnumbers the employer half by the narrowest margin on the site.
Fewer than seven thousand companies with staff nationally, averaging a crew of five, against a nonemployer count only about five times larger. That is a much narrower gap than contract cleaning or barbering show, and it points at the reason: this trade needs equipment. A truck mounted extraction unit is a capital purchase, which raises the floor on entry and keeps the population of casual operators down.
Payroll per employee runs above the general cleaning codes, which is consistent with an equipment trade rather than a labour one. The whole industry is well under a tenth of one per cent of American establishments with employees, so this is a genuinely small trade nationally, not a large one that happens to be fragmented.
The code covers carpet, rug and upholstery cleaning, on site or at a plant. General janitorial contracts that happen to include carpet work fall under janitorial services instead, which means this figure is specialists rather than everybody who has ever cleaned a carpet for money.
A trade of owner operated vans has no marketing budget and one enormous natural advantage: the half cleaned traffic lane. One wand pass down the middle of a carpet, photographed before the job is finished, is impossible to fake and needs no caption at all.
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 561740 Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning Services. 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 561740. 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 carpet cleaning companies are there in the US?
- Census County Business Patterns counted 6,673 carpet cleaning companies with at least one paid employee in 2023, employing 36,157 people on a payroll of $1.5 billion. Nonemployer Statistics counted a further 33,156 businesses with no employees, turning over $1.2 billion. NAICS code 561740.
- 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?
- Carpet cleaning, rug cleaning and upholstery cleaning, on site or at a plant. What it excludes: general janitorial contracts that happen to include carpet work, which fall under 561720.
- What does this count tell somebody running one of these businesses?
- Small on both sides of the count, and one of the two trades here where the nonemployer half outnumbers the employer half by the narrowest margin on the site. A trade of owner operated vans has no marketing budget and one enormous natural advantage: the half cleaned traffic lane. One wand pass down the middle of a carpet, photographed before the job is finished, is impossible to fake and needs no caption at all.
- 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.