Self-employment method
Vending Machine Operators
19,677 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 19,677 people who filed under this code in 2022, 48.76% 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 = 19,677 · 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 | 6,303 | 32.0% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 3,292 | 16.7% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 4,169 | 21.2% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 2,443 | 12.4% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 1,754 | 8.9% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 1,240 | 6.3% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 367 | 1.9% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 109 | 0.6% |
Who this suits
Median gross receipts of $10,876 put the typical filer somewhere between a serious side income and a failing attempt at a full-time one, and the receipts figure alone cannot tell you which.
19,677 people filed under this code — enough that the work exists everywhere and not enough that it supports a visible trade. Most people doing Vending Machine Operators are doing it alongside something else.
1,711 filers cleared $100,000, which is 8.7% of everyone under this code. A share that size means Vending Machine Operators supports a genuine professional tier, and the question becomes what puts someone in it.
Independent food and beverage retail suits people who can manage waste, margin and hours simultaneously in a category where the large chains set the price expectation.
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.
Who should not do this
The top quarter of Vending Machine Operators earns 9.0x the bottom quarter — under $3,902 against over $35,169, a spread of $31,267. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.
The bottom quarter of Vending Machine Operators earns under $3,902 — $46,118 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 on borrowed money against forecast footfall, which is the assumption that fails most often here.
Of the 19,677 people who filed as Vending Machine Operators in 2022, 48.8% grossed under $10,000 for the year — 9,594 people who did not clear a part-time wage in revenue, let alone in profit.
Take it as a floor, not an estimate. The $10,000 threshold is measured on money received, before materials, rent, fuel, insurance and self-employment tax, so the true share of filers who ended the year with no income is higher than the figure shown — we simply cannot say how much higher.
What the spread tells you
From $3,902 to $35,169 is 9.0x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $10,876 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.
Put in money rather than ratios: $3,902 at the 25th percentile, $10,876 at the midpoint, $35,169 at the 75th. $31,267 separates the quarter of Vending Machine Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $35,169. Reaching it from the $10,876 midpoint is $24,293 a year; reaching it from the $3,902 that the bottom quarter of Vending Machine Operators earn is $31,267.
$6,974 below the midpoint, $24,293 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Vending Machine Operators 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 Vending Machine Operators takes $5.22 in revenue — $1.87 at the bottom quarter and $16.90 at the top. Costs have not been deducted from any of those figures, so none of them is an hourly wage.
The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 6,303 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 3,292. $10,000 to $24,999, 4,169. Over $100,000, 1,716 — and 476 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $10,876 is turnover — the money that passed through Vending Machine Operators 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 Vending Machine Operators, the hourly figure is $10,876 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