Self-employment method
Furniture Retailers
16,215 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 16,215 people who filed under this code in 2022, 38.79% 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 = 16,215 · 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 | 4,053 | 25.1% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 2,237 | 13.8% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 3,173 | 19.6% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 2,111 | 13.1% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 1,624 | 10.1% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 1,588 | 9.8% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 775 | 4.8% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 419 | 2.6% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 179 | 1.1% |
Who this suits
Median gross receipts of $18,460 put the typical filer somewhere between a serious side income and a failing attempt at a full-time one, and the receipts figure alone cannot tell you which.
At 16,215 filers this is a real but thin national population. There is no established price for Furniture Retailers at this scale, which cuts both ways: nothing anchors you low and nothing anchors you high.
18.3% 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 furniture, electronics and home retail suits people who can sell considered purchases, where a customer visits twice and buys once.
There is no training requirement to file under this code — which is precisely why so many people appear in the bottom bands. Entry being free is not the same as the work being viable.
Who should not do this
The top quarter of Furniture Retailers earns 13.4x the bottom quarter — under $4,984 against over $66,787, a spread of $61,803. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Furniture Retailers earns under $4,984 — $45,036 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 holding showroom stock on credit — the purchase cycle in this category is long and the interest is not.
6,289 filers out of 16,215 — 38.8% — reported under $10,000 in gross receipts in 2022. At that share the bottom band is not a warning about beginners; it is a description of a large part of the field.
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 $4,984 to $66,787 is 13.4x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $18,460 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.
The middle half of this field earns between $4,984 and $66,787. That is $61,803 of range, with $18,460 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $4,984 and $66,787 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $18,460. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $48,327; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $61,803.
$13,476 below the midpoint, $48,327 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Furniture Retailers 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 Furniture Retailers takes $8.87 in revenue — $2.39 at the bottom quarter and $32.10 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, 4,053 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 2,237. $10,000 to $24,999, 3,173. Over $100,000, 2,961 — and 1,373 over $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 $18,460 midpoint before anyone eats, so it is not comparable with a $18,460 wage and should never be read as one.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $18,460 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