Self-employment method
Special food services
371,535 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 371,535 people who filed under this code in 2022, 54.31% 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 = 371,535 · 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 | 132,149 | 35.6% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 69,640 | 18.7% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 91,081 | 24.5% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 36,474 | 9.8% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 21,090 | 5.7% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 15,123 | 4.1% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 4,320 | 1.2% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 1,457 | 0.4% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 201 | 0.1% |
Who this suits
The median filer grossed $8,850 for the year — about $737 a month in revenue before expenses. That is pocket money at the midpoint, and the midpoint is by definition where half the field is or below.
371,535 filings make this a crowded field. Crowding is not automatically bad, but it does mean the price of the work is set by whoever will do it cheapest.
5.7% cleared $100,000 in receipts. That is a meaningful upper tier and it is worth asking what separates them, because it is rarely effort alone.
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 371,535 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 Special food services earns 6.4x the bottom quarter — under $3,514 against over $22,658, a spread of $19,144. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Special food services earns under $3,514 — $46,506 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.
The majority of this field — 54.3%, or 201,780 of 371,535 filers in 2022 — grossed under $10,000 for the year. When more than half the population is in the bottom band, that band is the normal outcome of Special food services, not the failure case.
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 $3,514 to $22,658 is 6.4x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $8,850 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.
Put in money rather than ratios: $3,514 at the 25th percentile, $8,850 at the midpoint, $22,658 at the 75th. $19,144 separates the quarter of Special food services at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $22,658. Reaching it from the $8,850 midpoint is $13,808 a year; reaching it from the $3,514 that the bottom quarter of Special food services earn is $19,144.
From $8,850 the drop to $3,514 is $5,336 and the climb to $22,658 is $13,808. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Converted to a 2,080-hour year, the receipts run $1.68 an hour at the 25th percentile, $4.25 at the midpoint and $10.89 at the 75th. Read them as revenue per hour worked; the equivalent wage is lower by whatever this work costs to do.
The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 132,149 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 69,640. $10,000 to $24,999, 91,081. Over $100,000, 21,101 — and 5,978 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $8,850 is turnover — the money that passed through Special food services 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 Special food services, the hourly figure is $8,850 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