Self-employment method
Limited-Service Restaurants
42,561 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 42,561 people who filed under this code in 2022, 32.47% 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 = 42,561 · 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 | 8,354 | 19.6% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 5,465 | 12.8% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 8,392 | 19.7% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 5,339 | 12.5% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 5,332 | 12.5% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 6,658 | 15.6% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 2,521 | 5.9% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 500 | 1.2% |
Who this suits
At a $23,337 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.
42,561 people filed under this code. That is enough that Limited-Service Restaurants has a going local rate in most places, and enough that you will be quoted against someone else.
9,661 filers, 22.7% of the total, took $100,000 or more in receipts. Read the size of that group as evidence about turnover in Limited-Service Restaurants rather than about income: the costs scale with it.
Independent food service suits people who can control food cost, labour cost and rent simultaneously — miss any one and the other two stop mattering.
Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 42,561 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 $7,092, top quarter over $90,986: 12.8x, or $6,991 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 Limited-Service Restaurants earns under $7,092 — $42,928 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 rent number you have stress-tested against a bad quarter, because that is the fixed cost that closes these businesses.
32.5% — 13,819 of the 42,561 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.
Read that as a floor, not an estimate. Census publishes gross receipts, not net income, so everyone inside that share earned less than $10,000 suggests once costs came out — and filers who grossed well above $10,000 may still have netted nothing.
What the spread tells you
At 12.8x, the gap between $7,092 and $90,986 is the shape of a field with a small, well-paid top. $23,337 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: $7,092 at the 25th percentile, $23,337 at the midpoint, $90,986 at the 75th. $83,894 separates the quarter of Limited-Service Restaurants at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $7,092 and $90,986 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $23,337. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $67,649; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $83,894.
$16,245 below the midpoint, $67,649 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Limited-Service Restaurants 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 Limited-Service Restaurants takes $11.21 in revenue — $3.40 at the bottom quarter and $43.74 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 Limited-Service Restaurants: 8,354 filers under $5,000, 5,465 between $5,000 and $9,999, 8,392 between $10,000 and $24,999, 9,679 above $100,000 and 3,021 above $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $23,337 is turnover — the money that passed through Limited-Service Restaurants 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 $23,337 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Limited-Service Restaurants, 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