Key Finding
Payroll was 39.7% of receipts in Health Care and Social Assistance.
In Wholesale Trade, it was 6.3%.
That made the first rate 6.4 times as high.
The gap was 33.5 percentage points.
The rate for all U.S. firms under 500 employees was 19.5%.
The Main Numbers
| Industry | Annual payroll ($m) | Receipts ($m) | Payroll share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Care and Social Assistance | 458,406.878 | 1,153,451.413 | 39.7% |
| Wholesale Trade | 244,037.194 | 3,902,185.860 | 6.3% |
| All industries | 3,465,049.519 | 17,779,171.396 | 19.5% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses.
What the Data Show
Payroll takes a very different share of receipts across industries.
Health Care and Social Assistance was at 39.7%.
Wholesale Trade was at 6.3%.
The rate for all industries was 19.5%.
These numbers do not show profit.
They also do not show if a business is run well or badly.
They only compare payroll with receipts.
Method
RecurSave used 2022 Census data.
The data came from the Statistics of U.S. Businesses.
We used the group for firms with fewer than 500 employees.
Payroll and receipts came from the same table and the same year.
The formula was:
Annual payroll ÷ receipts × 100
We rounded each rate to one decimal place.
Limitations
The data cover firms with paid staff.
They do not cover all firms with no paid staff.
Census payroll measures employee pay. It does not include every labor cost.
For some firms, owner or partner pay is not part of payroll.
Census also adds receipts from each business site. This may count some receipts more than once for firms with many sites.
The data show a difference between industries. They do not tell us why that difference exists.
Why This Is Useful
Census gives payroll and receipts as separate numbers.
This study puts them on the same scale.
That makes the industries easier to compare.
It also gives writers a clear public benchmark.