Self-employment method
Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing
41,206 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 41,206 people who filed under this code in 2022, 29.65% 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 = 41,206 · 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 | 7,154 | 17.4% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 5,064 | 12.3% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 8,193 | 19.9% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 6,652 | 16.1% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 5,915 | 14.4% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 5,461 | 13.3% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 1,835 | 4.5% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 931 | 2.3% |
Who this suits
The median filer grossed $25,720, or $2,143 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.
41,206 people filed under this code. That is enough that Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing has a going local rate in most places, and enough that you will be quoted against someone else.
8,241 filers, 20.0% of the total, took $100,000 or more in receipts. Read the size of that group as evidence about turnover in Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing rather than about income: the costs scale with it.
Independent metal fabrication suits people who can quote accurately off a drawing and hold a tolerance alone, with the sales function also theirs.
Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 41,206 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 Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing earns 10.2x the bottom quarter — under $8,107 against over $82,466, a spread of $74,359. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing earns under $8,107 — $41,913 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 without knowing your true machine-hour cost; quoting below it is invisible until the year is over.
29.6% — 12,217 of the 41,206 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.
That share is a floor, not an estimate: $10,000 is revenue, not earnings. Everyone counted inside it kept less than $10,000, and an unknown number of the filers above it also finished the year with nothing after costs.
What the spread tells you
From $8,107 to $82,466 is 10.2x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $25,720 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.
The middle half of this field earns between $8,107 and $82,466. That is $74,359 of range, with $25,720 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $82,466, the 75th percentile, is worth $56,746 a year more than the $25,720 midpoint and $74,359 more than the $8,107 a quarter of Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing settle for.
$17,613 below the midpoint, $56,746 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing that is not a median — including any average you see quoted elsewhere — is describing the top of the range rather than the middle.
Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $12.36 an hour at the midpoint, $3.89 at the 25th percentile and $39.64 at the 75th. That is turnover per hour, not pay per hour, and it is not comparable with the $24.04 an hour a typical American job pays.
Straight from the Census bands for Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing: 7,154 filers under $5,000, 5,064 between $5,000 and $9,999, 8,193 between $10,000 and $24,999, 8,227 above $100,000 and 2,766 above $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
These are GROSS RECEIPTS: everything that came in, before expenses. Rent, stock, fuel, insurance and self-employment tax all come out of the $25,720 midpoint before anyone eats, so it is not comparable with a $25,720 wage and should never be read as one.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $25,720 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else