Self-employment method
Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance
30,224 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 30,224 people who filed under this code in 2022, 29.15% 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 = 30,224 · 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 | 4,872 | 16.1% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 3,939 | 13.0% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 7,025 | 23.2% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 5,187 | 17.2% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 4,592 | 15.2% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 3,534 | 11.7% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 847 | 2.8% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 167 | 0.6% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 61 | 0.2% |
Who this suits
At a $23,454 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.
30,224 people filed under this code, almost none of whom appear in any employment statistic. Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance is part of the economy salary surveys simply do not see.
A 15.2% share — 4,594 filers — grossed $100,000 or more. That is well above what most codes here manage, and it says the middle of Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance is closer to a business than to a sideline.
This suits people whose customers come back and send others, since in repair work reputation is the whole marketing budget.
Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 30,224 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
Bottom quarter under $8,407, top quarter over $67,912: 8.1x, or $4,958 a month. At this stretch the label has stopped describing one occupation, and every summary statistic about it — including the midpoint — should be treated with suspicion.
The bottom quarter of Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance earns under $8,407 — $41,613 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 customer base already forming; the van payment starts immediately and the referrals do not.
29.2% — 8,810 of the 30,224 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
At 8.1x, the gap between $8,407 and $67,912 is the shape of a field with a small, well-paid top. $23,454 is real and it is not a forecast — the people quoting the upper end at you are describing a minority.
Put in money rather than ratios: $8,407 at the 25th percentile, $23,454 at the midpoint, $67,912 at the 75th. $59,505 separates the quarter of Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $67,912, the 75th percentile, is worth $44,458 a year more than the $23,454 midpoint and $59,505 more than the $8,407 a quarter of Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance settle for.
The top quarter of Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance begins $44,458 above the $23,454 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $15,047 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.
Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $11.27 an hour at the midpoint, $4.04 at the 25th percentile and $32.65 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.
The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 4,872 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 3,939. $10,000 to $24,999, 7,025. Over $100,000, 4,609 — and 1,075 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $23,454 is turnover — the money that passed through Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance before expenses. What is left after costs is a different and much smaller number that this dataset does not publish.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Home and Garden Equipment and Appliance Repair and Maintenance, the hourly figure is $23,454 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else