Self-employment method
Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated)
14,080 people filed as a nonemployer business under this industry code in 2022 — no payroll, no employees, just them. These are gross receipts reported to the IRS, before any expense is taken out.
Median GROSS RECEIPTS for the year — money in, before rent, materials, fuel, insurance or tax. This is not take-home pay.
Share who grossed under $10,000 for the whole year — before expenses.
The middle half, in gross receipts. A quarter of filers took less than the lower figure.
Source: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2022 · view
How often it does not work out
Of the 14,080 people who filed under this code in 2022, 32.42% grossed under $10,000 for the entire year — before a single expense was deducted.
That is a floor, not an estimate. Census publishes GROSS RECEIPTS, not net income. Everyone inside that share earned less than the figure suggests once rent, materials, mileage, insurance and self-employment tax came out — and filers who grossed well above the threshold may still have netted nothing. The true share of people who earn nothing meaningful from this is higher than the number above, never lower.
Denominator: establishments_total = 14,080 · US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2022 · view
Every filer, by what they grossed
The full distribution Census publishes. The median above is interpolated inside the band that holds the 50th percentile.
| Gross receipts for the year | Filers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $5,000 | 2,724 | 19.3% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 1,841 | 13.1% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 3,098 | 22.0% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 1,762 | 12.5% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 2,177 | 15.5% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 2,136 | 15.2% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 274 | 1.9% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 51 | 0.4% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 17 | 0.1% |
Who this suits
The median filer grossed $21,984, or $1,832 a month before expenses. That is an operating business at part-time scale: enough revenue to be worth running properly, not enough to be the only thing in the household.
At 14,080 filers this is a real but thin national population. There is no established price for Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) at this scale, which cuts both ways: nothing anchors you low and nothing anchors you high.
17.6% of filers grossed $100,000 or more, which is high for this dataset. A substantial share of this field is running an actual business rather than an occasional one.
Independent personal services suit people who keep clients for years — a chair, a room or a round, one person, and a book built entirely by word of mouth.
Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 14,080 people did. Free entry is why the lower bands are as full as they are: the distribution below counts everyone who tried, not everyone who was ready.
Who should not do this
The top quarter of Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) earns 10.6x the bottom quarter — under $7,162 against over $76,068, a spread of $68,906. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) earns under $7,162 — $42,858 below the $50,020 a typical American job pays. Entering at the bottom and waiting is a live risk here, not a theoretical one, and some people never leave that quarter.
Do not start this on a lease you cannot cover from existing clients; the empty first months are the ones that end it.
32.4% — 4,564 of the 14,080 filers in 2022 — grossed under $10,000 for the year. That is not the tail of the distribution, it is a third of it, and it is measured before any expense came out.
Take it as a floor, not an estimate. The $10,000 threshold is measured on money received, before materials, rent, fuel, insurance and self-employment tax, so the true share of filers who ended the year with no income is higher than the figure shown — we simply cannot say how much higher.
What the spread tells you
At 10.6x, the gap between $7,162 and $76,068 is the shape of a field with a small, well-paid top. $21,984 is real and it is not a forecast — the people quoting the upper end at you are describing a minority.
The middle half of this field earns between $7,162 and $76,068. That is $68,906 of range, with $21,984 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $76,068. Reaching it from the $21,984 midpoint is $54,084 a year; reaching it from the $7,162 that the bottom quarter of Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) earn is $68,906.
$14,822 below the midpoint, $54,084 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) that is not a median — including any average you see quoted elsewhere — is describing the top of the range rather than the middle.
Per hour of a full-time year, the middle of Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) takes $10.56 in revenue — $3.44 at the bottom quarter and $36.57 at the top. Costs have not been deducted from any of those figures, so none of them is an hourly wage.
The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 2,724 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 1,841. $10,000 to $24,999, 3,098. Over $100,000, 2,478 — and 342 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $21,984 is turnover — the money that passed through Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) before expenses. What is left after costs is a different and much smaller number that this dataset does not publish.
The hourly number on this page is $21,984 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated), so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else