Self-employment method
Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance
107,344 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 107,344 people who filed under this code in 2022, 33.55% 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 = 107,344 · 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 | 20,087 | 18.7% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 15,931 | 14.8% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 26,463 | 24.7% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 17,539 | 16.3% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 13,619 | 12.7% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 9,794 | 9.1% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 2,736 | 2.5% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 975 | 0.9% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 200 | 0.2% |
Who this suits
At a $20,007 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.
107,344 people filed under this code. A field that large has a settled price, a settled set of expectations, and no shortage of people willing to meet both.
A 12.8% share — 13,740 filers — grossed $100,000 or more. That is well above what most codes here manage, and it says the middle of Other Personal and Household Goods 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 107,344 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 Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance earns 7.3x the bottom quarter — under $7,118 against over $51,792, a spread of $44,674. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance earns under $7,118 — $42,902 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.
33.6% — 36,013 of the 107,344 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 7.3x, the gap between $7,118 and $51,792 is the shape of a field with a small, well-paid top. $20,007 is real and it is not a forecast — the people quoting the upper end at you are describing a minority.
The middle half of this field earns between $7,118 and $51,792. That is $44,674 of range, with $20,007 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $7,118 and $51,792 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $20,007. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $31,785; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $44,674.
The upper half of the middle range — $20,007 to $51,792, or $31,785 — is far longer than the lower half at $12,889. In a shape like this an average would flatter Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance considerably, and would describe nobody.
Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $9.61 an hour at the midpoint, $3.42 at the 25th percentile and $24.90 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, 20,087 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 15,931. $10,000 to $24,999, 26,463. Over $100,000, 13,705 — and 3,911 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $20,007 is turnover — the money that passed through Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance before expenses. What is left after costs is a different and much smaller number that this dataset does not publish.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $20,007 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