Self-employment method
Fishing
61,999 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 61,999 people who filed under this code in 2022, 29.73% 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 = 61,999 · 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 | 10,671 | 17.2% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 7,760 | 12.5% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 14,353 | 23.2% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 10,700 | 17.3% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 8,527 | 13.8% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 6,626 | 10.7% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 2,175 | 3.5% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 859 | 1.4% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 328 | 0.5% |
Who this suits
At a $23,135 median in gross receipts, the typical person under this code is running a real but part-time operation. Full-time equivalence would require roughly triple this before costs.
With 61,999 filers, this is a populated field. The market sets the price rather than you, and the useful question is what would let you charge above it.
16.1% 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 fishing, hunting and trapping suits people who can absorb a bad season without borrowing, since quota, weather and price all move against you in the same year.
Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 61,999 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 Fishing earns 8.3x the bottom quarter — under $8,111 against over $67,681, a spread of $59,570. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Fishing earns under $8,111 — $41,909 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 a plan for the year the catch, the quota or the price fails — all three eventually will.
Of 61,999 filers in 2022, 29.7% took under $10,000 across the whole year in gross receipts: 18,432 people. Whatever the working version of Fishing looks like, a third or more never reach it.
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
A ratio of 8.3x between the quarters is the signature of a winner-take-most distribution. $23,135 is a real number about a real population, but nobody entering Fishing should plan around it.
In cash terms the middle half of Fishing runs $8,111 to $67,681 — $59,570 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $23,135.
Between $8,111 and $67,681 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $23,135. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $44,546; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $59,570.
$15,024 below the midpoint, $44,546 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Fishing 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 Fishing takes $11.12 in revenue — $3.89 at the bottom quarter and $32.53 at the top. Costs have not been deducted from any of those figures, so none of them is an hourly wage.
Straight from the Census bands for Fishing: 10,671 filers under $5,000, 7,760 between $5,000 and $9,999, 14,353 between $10,000 and $24,999, 9,988 above $100,000 and 3,362 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 $23,135 midpoint before anyone eats, so it is not comparable with a $23,135 wage and should never be read as one.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $23,135 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