The median firm in this industry books between $500,000 and $1 million a year. At the same time, 63.3% of firms split only 7.0% of the industry’s receipts.
That comes from the US Census Bureau’s Statistics of US Businesses for 2022, released in 2025. The data covers NAICS 238220, “Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors.” The federal industry code bundles plumbing contractors in with heating and air conditioning contractors. There is no Census code for HVAC alone, so every number below carries both trades.
The table counts 107,004 firms with employees, 109,601 establishments, and 1,176,759 employees. Together those firms reported $306.28 billion in receipts.
The firm counts by annual receipts band are plain:
- 17,681 firms reported under $100,000.
- 32,855 reported $100,000 to $499,999.
- 17,185 reported $500,000 to $999,999.
- 20,640 reported $1 million to $2.49 million.
- 9,052 reported $2.5 million to $4.99 million.
- 9,591 reported $5 million or more.
That puts 47.2% of employer firms under $500,000 and 82.6% under $2.5 million. The middle firm is not a $5 million operation. It sits in the $500,000 to $999,999 band.
The average reaches $2.86 million because 338 firms take 27.1% of the receipts
Divide $306.28 billion by 107,004 firms and you get about $2.86 million per firm. That is roughly four times what the median shop actually books.
The 67,721 firms under $1 million are 63.3% of all firms but only $21.52 billion, or 7.0%, of industry receipts. At the other end, 338 firms report $100 million or more. They are 0.3% of firms and they take $83.05 billion, or 27.1% of receipts.
So an “average HVAC company revenue” figure can look impressive while telling a small contractor almost nothing. A few hundred giants pull the arithmetic upward, and a shop benchmarking itself against that average concludes it is failing at something it is not failing at.
$729,663 supports 4.2 employees and $210,903 in payroll
The 17,185 firms in the median band averaged $729,663 in annual receipts, 4.2 employees, and $210,903 in annual payroll. Payroll equaled 28.9% of receipts. Average payroll per employee was about $50,063.
The next band up changes the operating picture. Firms reporting $1 million to $2.49 million averaged $1,577,932 in receipts, 7.9 employees, and $443,222 in payroll, with payroll at 28.1% of receipts. Industry wide, payroll runs 26.9% of receipts, and receipts per employee are about $260,275.
These are revenue and payroll figures, not profit. Census publishes receipts and payroll for this industry. It does not publish net income or a margin, so any specific margin number you see quoted is not coming from this data. Producing your own requires job costing you have to set up deliberately, and the accounting stack for that is two purchases, not one.
178,663 businesses in this trade have no payroll at all
The Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics for 2023 count 178,663 plumbing, heating, and air conditioning businesses with no paid employees. Owner only operations. Their combined receipts were $14.005 billion, which averages $78,387 per business per year.
There are more of those than there are establishments with any payroll at all. County Business Patterns counted 111,207 establishments with paid employees in 2023. The single truck operator is not the edge case in this trade. Counted honestly, it is the most common form of the business.
The paid establishments are small too. Of those 111,207, some 64,871, or 58.3%, had fewer than five employees. A total of 85,458, or 76.8%, had fewer than 10. Only 1,656, or 1.5%, had 100 or more.
Individual pay tracks that. BLS puts the median wage for heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers at $61,010 a year, or $29.33 an hour, as of May 2025, across 440,900 jobs. BLS projects 11% growth from 2025 to 2035, about 48,200 added positions, with a postsecondary nondegree award as typical entry level education.
Nobody at a four person shop is assigned to the phone
Cross the two federal tables and something specific falls out.
In the BLS occupation data for NAICS 238220, 288,160 HVACR mechanics and installers earned an annual mean of $58,430 in May 2023. The same table counted 45,890 general office clerks and 14,150 customer service representatives across roughly 1.2 million industry workers. That is about 5% of the workforce, and those seats sit overwhelmingly in the larger firms.
At a four person shop, all four are billable. Nobody is assigned to the phone. The call gets answered by whoever has a free hand, and often by nobody. That is not a staffing preference, it is arithmetic. One general office clerk at the $44,670 industry mean adds about 6% of revenue to a payroll line already running 28.9% of receipts, and that clerk still goes home at five.
The demand does not keep office hours. 62% of HVAC calls arrive after 5pm, on weekends, or on holidays, and 85% of callers who cannot reach you never call back. Run the numbers on what one missed no heat call costs before treating the phone as minor overhead.
Dial 72’s Starter plan is $95 a month and includes 24/7 call answering, emergency triage with instant alerts, job booking with calendar sync, call summaries by text, and it works with the shop’s existing number. Against $729,663 in annual receipts, that is a fraction of a percent, and it is measured against a $44,670 clerk who leaves at five. What the software actually costs at this size puts the rest of the overhead question in the same small shop context.
EPA certification does not shrink with the shop
Technicians who maintain, service, repair, or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerants must hold EPA Section 608 certification under 40 CFR Part 82 Subpart F. Type I covers small appliances, Type II high and very high pressure appliances, Type III low pressure appliances, and Universal all of them. Apprentices are exempt while supervised by a certified technician.
The requirement is the same at every size. A one truck operator in the $78,387 nonemployer band carries the identical obligation to a $100 million company. Compliance cost is one of the few lines that does not scale down with revenue, which is part of why the bands below $500,000 are as crowded as they are.
What moving up a band actually changes
Going from the median band to $1 million to $2.49 million is not just a bigger sales number. The average firm goes from 4.2 employees to 7.9, and from $210,903 in payroll to $443,222. That is where dispatch stops being something the owner does from the truck, and scheduling and dispatch software starts earning its line item, the same way chasing replacement leads starts mattering once receipts per employee is the number you are trying to move.
Find your own receipts band in the list above before you compare yourself to a $2.86 million average built out of companies a hundred times your size. Then pull your two real operating numbers, receipts per employee and payroll as a percentage of receipts, because those are what separate one band from the next in the federal data. And decide, in writing, who answers the call that comes in at 7pm, rather than leaving it to whoever has a free hand.
