Reupholstery and Furniture Repair

At a $20,933 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.

17,193 people filed under this code — enough that the work exists everywhere and not enough that it supports a visible trade. Most people doing Reupholstery and Furniture Repair are doing it alongside something else.

9.7% of filers grossed $100,000 or more. That is a substantial upper tier by the standards of this dataset — the difference between a full operation and an occasional one is visible in the distribution rather than only in the anecdotes.

This suits people whose customers come back and send others, since in repair work reputation is the whole marketing budget.

There is no qualification, licence or minimum to appear in this data — you file and you are counted. Read the receipts distribution as the price of that: no barrier at the door means no filter before the numbers.

Bottom quarter under $7,779, top quarter over $48,727: 6.3x, or $3,412 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 Reupholstery and Furniture Repair earns under $7,779 — $42,241 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.

31.2% — 5,369 of the 17,193 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.

From $7,779 to $48,727 is 6.3x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $20,933 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.

The middle half of this field earns between $7,779 and $48,727. That is $40,948 of range, with $20,933 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

Between $7,779 and $48,727 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $20,933. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $27,794; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $40,948.

The upper half of the middle range — $20,933 to $48,727, or $27,794 — is far longer than the lower half at $13,154. In a shape like this an average would flatter Reupholstery and Furniture Repair considerably, and would describe nobody.

Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $10.06 an hour at the midpoint, $3.73 at the 25th percentile and $23.42 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.

Counted straight off the return: 2,958 filers grossed under $5,000, 2,411 took $5,000 to $9,999, 4,428 took $10,000 to $24,999, 1,675 cleared $100,000 and 299 cleared $250,000.