Census CBP 2023 · NAICS 236118
How many remodelling contractors are there in the US?
The renovation industry counted at the federal level: employer firms, employees, and one of the largest payrolls on this site.
- With employees135,337establishments
- Without employeesNot publishedat this code
- Employees480,272in the employer half
- Annual payroll$27.4 billionemployer half
135,337 remodelling firms with staff, averaging three and a half employees each. That is the smallest average crew of any construction industry on this site, and it explains why remodelling marketing is so dependent on word of mouth and photographs.
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 | 135,337 | Not published |
| People employed | 480,272 | None, by definition |
| Average staff each | 3.5 | Zero |
| Annual payroll | $27.4 billion | Not published |
| Source | Census CBP 2023 | See the note below |
Census publishes nonemployer data for this trade only at NAICS 2361, Residential Building Construction, which is 839,793 businesses. That code includes new home builders as well as remodelers, so it is quoted here as context and never as a remodelling count.
residential remodelling contractors with employees are 1.619 per cent of all 8,361,342 US establishments with employees
The five states with the most residential remodelling contractors
| State | Establishments with employees |
|---|---|
| California | 16,792 |
| New York | 13,427 |
| Florida | 10,287 |
| Texas | 6,224 |
| Illinois | 6,209 |
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.
Residential Remodelers
Counted here
General contractors doing additions, alterations, renovation and repair of houses, including kitchen and bathroom remodels.
Counted somewhere else
New single family home builders (236115), and single trade specialists such as painters or electricians.
NAICS 236118 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about residential remodelling contractors
The smallest average crew of any construction industry on this site, which explains why remodelling lives on word of mouth and photographs.
Over a hundred and thirty thousand remodelling firms with staff, averaging three and a half employees each. That is smaller than painting, finish carpentry or landscaping, and it is the single most useful fact on this page. A three person business has no sales function, no marketing budget and no capacity to bid widely, so it wins work through referral and through evidence of finished jobs.
The industry is also large in absolute terms, at over one and a half per cent of every American establishment with employees, and it carries a payroll well into the tens of billions. Small businesses, but a great many of them, competing locally against each other rather than nationally against a few large firms.
Census publishes nonemployer data for this trade only at a level that includes new home builders, so the self employed remodeller cannot be counted cleanly. New single family home builders and single trade specialists such as painters and electricians are excluded from the employer figure, which makes it a reasonably clean count of general renovation contractors.
Enquiries cluster in the new year and again in early autumn, and good trades are booked months ahead of the season the client is imagining. Renovation content is selling a slot half a year out, which means the photographs have to keep being published when the diary is already full.
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 236118 Residential Remodelers. 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.
What these workers are paid
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How many remodelling contractors are there in the US?
- Census County Business Patterns counted 135,337 residential remodelling contractors with at least one paid employee in 2023, employing 480,272 people on a payroll of $27.4 billion. Census does not publish a nonemployer count at this level of detail, so the figure above covers businesses with staff only. NAICS code 236118.
- 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?
- General contractors doing additions, alterations, renovation and repair of houses, including kitchen and bathroom remodels. What it excludes: new single family home builders (236115), and single trade specialists such as painters or electricians.
- What does this count tell somebody running one of these businesses?
- The smallest average crew of any construction industry on this site, which explains why remodelling lives on word of mouth and photographs. Enquiries cluster in the new year and again in early autumn, and good trades are booked months ahead of the season the client is imagining. Renovation content is selling a slot half a year out, which means the photographs have to keep being published when the diary is already full.
- 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.