INDUSTRY REPORTS · June 30, 2026

US Roofing Industry Concentration: Firm-Size & Fragmentation Report 2026

Census SUSB 2022 firm-size data for US roofing (NAICS 238160): 24,044 firms, payroll per worker by size, and what fragmentation means for M&A roll-ups.

By The Roofing Brief Team

The United States roofing contractor industry is one of the most fragmented building trades in the federal statistical record. According to the U.S. Census Bureau Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), 2022, NAICS 238160 (Roofing Contractors) contained 24,044 employer firms operating 24,532 establishments, employing 204,998 paid workers and paying $13.3 billion in annual payroll. This report uses the SUSB firm-size detail to measure exactly how the industry splits between a long tail of very small firms and a small number of large employers, and what that concentration means for the private-equity roll-up thesis.

Executive Summary

The U.S. roofing contractor industry (NAICS 238160) had 24,044 employer firms and 24,532 establishments in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, SUSB, 2022).
Firms with fewer than 20 employees accounted for 21,834 of 24,044 firms, or 90.8% of all employer firms, but only 39.0% of industry employment (Census SUSB, 2022).
Firms with 1 to 9 employees made up 81.1% of all firms yet held just 23.7% of employment, the same employment share as the 234 firms with 100 or more employees (Census SUSB, 2022).
Only 18 roofing firms employed 500 or more workers in 2022, representing 0.07% of firms but 7.2% of employment (Census SUSB, 2022).
Average annual payroll per employee rose monotonically with firm size, from $60,381 at firms with 1 to 4 employees to $75,462 at firms with 500 or more employees (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
Industry-wide average payroll per employee was $64,884 in 2022, and total industry receipts were $68.8 billion (Census SUSB, 2022).
Census Nonemployer Statistics for NAICS 238160 (self-employed roofers with no payroll) could not be retrieved from a primary source for this report and are flagged as a data gap, not estimated.

Key Findings

The roofing industry had 24,044 employer firms in 2022, against 24,532 establishments, implying roughly 1.02 establishments per firm and very little multi-location structure (Census SUSB, 2022).
15,714 firms employed 1 to 4 workers in 2022, making this the single largest size class at 65.4% of all roofing firms (Census SUSB, 2022).
The 1 to 4 employee class held 23,628 workers, only 11.5% of total industry employment, despite being two-thirds of all firms (Census SUSB, 2022).
The 20 to 99 employee class held 76,608 workers in 2022, 37.4% of employment, the largest employment block of any size band (Census SUSB, 2022).
The 100 to 499 employee class contained 216 firms operating 456 establishments, an average of 2.1 establishments per firm, the first size band where multi-location operation becomes common (Census SUSB, 2022).
The 18 firms with 500 or more employees operated 116 establishments, an average of 6.4 establishments per firm (Census SUSB, 2022).
Average firm size climbed from 1.5 employees in the 1 to 4 class to 818 employees in the 500-plus class (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
Annual payroll per worker was lowest in the 5 to 9 employee class at $52,782 and highest in the 500-plus class at $75,462, a gap of $22,680 per worker (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
Receipts per employee were roughly flat across the larger size classes at about $317,000 to $332,000 but markedly higher in the 1 to 4 class at $413,179, consistent with owner-operator and materials-pass-through accounting (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
Total industry receipts were $68.8 billion in 2022, with firms under 20 employees generating $27.9 billion, or 40.6% (Census SUSB, 2022).
Firms with 100 or more employees, just 234 firms, accounted for $4.97 billion of payroll, 27.0% of the industry total (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
The Census SUSB figures are establishment-based employer data and exclude nonemployer (no-payroll) roofing businesses, which would push the firm count well above 24,044 (Census SUSB methodology, 2022).

Industry Size and the Firm-Size Distribution

The SUSB program counts employer firms, their establishments, paid employment in the March 12 pay period, and full-year payroll. For NAICS 238160 in 2022, the distribution by enterprise employment size is heavily weighted toward the smallest firms. The table below consolidates the Census detailed-size bands into six standard classes and reconciles exactly to the published industry totals.

Employment size class	Firms	Share of firms	Establishments	Employment	Share of employment	Annual payroll ($1,000)
1 to 4 employees	15,714	65.4%	15,716	23,628	11.5%	1,426,676
5 to 9 employees	3,792	15.8%	3,793	24,911	12.2%	1,314,844
10 to 19 employees	2,328	9.7%	2,334	31,342	15.3%	1,854,898
20 to 99 employees	1,976	8.2%	2,117	76,608	37.4%	5,109,313
100 to 499 employees	216	0.9%	456	33,777	16.5%	2,483,654
500 or more employees	18	0.07%	116	14,732	7.2%	1,111,709
Total (NAICS 238160)	24,044	100%	24,532	204,998	100%	13,301,094

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses, 2022, “The Number of Firms and Establishments, Employment, Annual Payroll, and Receipts by State, Industry, and Enterprise Employment Size,” released April 10, 2025. The 10 to 19 class combines the Census 10 to 14 and 15 to 19 bands; 20 to 99 combines the 20 to 24 through 75 to 99 bands; 100 to 499 combines the 100 to 149 through 400 to 499 bands. Consolidated firm, establishment, employment, and payroll columns sum exactly to the published industry totals.

The shape of this distribution is the central fact about the roofing industry. Two-thirds of firms are micro-firms with four or fewer employees, and more than 90% have fewer than 20. Employment, by contrast, is concentrated in the middle and upper bands: the 20 to 99 class alone holds 37.4% of all roofing workers despite being only 8.2% of firms. This is the signature of a fragmented, low-barrier service trade in which starting a firm is easy but scaling one is hard.

Payroll per Employee by Firm Size

Average annual payroll per employee, computed as annual payroll divided by paid employment within each size class, increases steadily with firm size. The pattern is consistent with larger roofing firms carrying more supervisory, estimating, safety, and administrative staff, taking on more commercial and union work, and operating in higher-wage metropolitan markets.

Employment size class	Employment	Annual payroll ($1,000)	Payroll per employee	Average employees per firm
1 to 4 employees	23,628	1,426,676	$60,381	1.5
5 to 9 employees	24,911	1,314,844	$52,782	6.6
10 to 19 employees	31,342	1,854,898	$59,183	13.5
20 to 99 employees	76,608	5,109,313	$66,694	38.8
100 to 499 employees	33,777	2,483,654	$73,531	156.4
500 or more employees	14,732	1,111,709	$75,462	818.4
Industry average	204,998	13,301,094	$64,884	8.5

Source: derived from U.S. Census Bureau, SUSB, 2022. Payroll per employee equals annual payroll divided by employment within each class. These are payroll-based averages, not individual salaries, and they include all W-2 compensation reported on employer payroll, not benefits.

One caveat applies to the smallest class. The 1 to 4 employee band shows payroll per employee of $60,381, higher than the 5 to 9 class. Working-owner compensation in very small firms is reported inconsistently, and the SUSB March pay-period employment count for seasonal micro-firms can be low relative to full-year payroll, which inflates the apparent per-worker figure. The cleanest signal in the table is the rise from the 5 to 9 class ($52,782) up through the 500-plus class ($75,462), a $22,680 spread that holds steadily across the larger bands.

Concentration and the Long Tail

The defining feature of NAICS 238160 is the mismatch between where the firms are and where the workers are. The smallest firms dominate the firm count; the larger firms dominate employment. The table below isolates the two ends of the distribution.

Segment	Firms	Share of all firms	Employment	Share of all employment
Smallest firms (1 to 9 employees)	19,506	81.1%	48,539	23.7%
Small firms (fewer than 20 employees)	21,834	90.8%	79,881	39.0%
Large firms (100 or more employees)	234	0.97%	48,509	23.7%
Largest firms (500 or more employees)	18	0.07%	14,732	7.2%

Source: derived from U.S. Census Bureau, SUSB, 2022.

The cleanest way to see the long tail is this symmetry: the 19,506 smallest roofing firms (1 to 9 employees), which are 81.1% of the industry by firm count, employ 48,539 people, almost exactly the same headcount as the 234 firms with 100 or more employees, which are under 1% of firms. Both groups hold 23.7% of industry employment. The roofing industry has tens of thousands of small operators competing locally and a few hundred firms that aggregate a comparable share of the workforce.

What Fragmentation Means for the M&A Roll-Up Thesis

Private-equity sponsors have publicly targeted residential and commercial roofing as a roll-up sector, on the logic that a fragmented industry of small operators can be consolidated into regional platforms with purchasing scale and shared overhead. The SUSB data clarify both the opportunity and its limits.

The opportunity is real on the firm-count side. With 24,044 employer firms and 90.8% of them under 20 employees, there is a deep pool of small targets. A platform that has bought 50 firms has touched only 0.2% of the employer firm count. The runway for tuck-in acquisitions is long.

The constraint is on the employment and revenue side. Because employment is concentrated in the middle of the distribution, controlling a meaningful share of industry capacity requires buying firms in the 20 to 99 and 100 to 499 employee bands, where there are only 1,976 and 216 firms respectively. The 1 to 4 employee class, two-thirds of all firms, holds only 11.5% of employment and tends to be owner-operator businesses with limited transferable enterprise value once the owner leaves. A buyer who acquires only micro-firms accumulates firm logos without accumulating durable workforce or revenue.

The receipts data sharpen this point. Firms under 20 employees generated $27.9 billion of the industry’s $68.8 billion in receipts in 2022, 40.6%, but spread across 21,834 firms that is an average of roughly $1.3 million in receipts each. The 234 firms with 100-plus employees are far scarcer and far larger, and they are the firms a consolidator actually needs. The roll-up math therefore favors strategies that anchor on mid-market and large regional roofers and use micro-firm tuck-ins for geographic fill-in, not the reverse. Fragmentation makes consolidation possible; the concentration of employment in a thin band of larger firms makes it expensive to get to scale.

Original Synthesis

The three derived insights below are built only from the verified 2022 Census SUSB firm-size table for NAICS 238160. Each states its formula, inputs, and limitations.

1. The 81-to-1 long-tail symmetry

Formula: compare firm share and employment share of the 1 to 9 employee segment versus the 100-plus segment. Inputs: SUSB 2022 firms and employment by size class. Result: the smallest 81.1% of firms and the largest 0.97% of firms each employ 23.7% of the workforce (48,539 versus 48,509 workers). Limitation: employment is the March 12 pay-period count and understates seasonal peak labor; the symmetry is a 2022 snapshot, not a trend.

2. The payroll-per-worker size premium

Formula: annual payroll divided by employment within each size class, then the spread between the 5 to 9 class and the 500-plus class. Inputs: SUSB 2022 payroll and employment by size class. Result: payroll per worker rises from $52,782 (5 to 9 employees) to $75,462 (500-plus employees), a 43% premium for working at the largest firms. Limitation: this is payroll per head, not individual wages; occupational mix, geography, and commercial-versus-residential mix all vary by firm size and are not controlled for. The 1 to 4 class is excluded from the spread because owner-compensation reporting distorts it.

3. The acquisition-density index

Formula: for each size class, divide its share of employment by its share of firms to get employment captured per firm acquired. Inputs: SUSB 2022 firm and employment shares. Result: the 1 to 4 class has a ratio of 0.18 (it takes many firms to capture little employment), while the 100 to 499 class has a ratio of 18.3 and the 500-plus class 96. A consolidator captures roughly 96 times more workforce per deal in the 500-plus band than the 1 to 4 band captures per deal relative to firm count (a 0.18 ratio), a more than 500-fold difference in workforce density per acquisition. Limitation: this measures workforce density per firm, not deal price, enterprise value, or integration cost, and assumes acquired firms retain their workforce.

Charts We Recommend

Firms versus employment by size class (paired bars). Data: SUSB 2022 firm share and employment share for the six size classes. Source: Census SUSB 2022. Insight: visualizes the inversion between firm count and employment. Citation-worthy because it shows the fragmentation thesis in one image.
Payroll per employee by firm size (ascending bar). Data: derived payroll-per-employee by class. Source: Census SUSB 2022, derived. Insight: the size-wage premium. Citation-worthy as a clean labor-economics fact.
Lorenz-style cumulative curve. Data: cumulative share of firms (smallest first) against cumulative share of employment. Source: Census SUSB 2022. Insight: a single concentration curve for the industry. Citation-worthy as a reusable inequality measure.
Average establishments per firm by size class. Data: establishments divided by firms per class. Source: Census SUSB 2022, derived. Insight: where multi-location operation begins (the 100-plus bands). Citation-worthy for roll-up and franchise analysis.

Methodology

Source selection prioritized primary federal data. The single primary source for the firm-size distribution is the U.S. Census Bureau Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB) 2022 annual dataset, “The Number of Firms and Establishments, Employment, Annual Payroll, and Receipts by State, Industry, and Enterprise Employment Size,” released April 10, 2025. The national NAICS 238160 rows were extracted directly from the Census-published Excel file. The Census detailed size bands were consolidated into six standard classes (1 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 19, 20 to 99, 100 to 499, 500-plus). Consolidated columns were checked against the published industry totals and reconcile exactly (24,044 firms; 24,532 establishments; 204,998 employees; $13,301,094 thousand payroll). The 500-plus class was computed as the published industry total minus the published “less than 500 employees” subtotal.

Derived metrics (payroll per employee, employment shares, firm shares, establishments per firm, receipts per employee, and the acquisition-density index) were calculated from these verified figures. Where the SUSB applies noise flags for disclosure protection, the affected cells are aggregated values flagged “G” (low noise) in the source. Conflicting figures were not an issue here because a single internally consistent dataset was used. Data limitations are detailed below. Last updated: June 30, 2026.

Source Quality and Tiering

Tier 1 (primary government data): U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), 2022 annual data by enterprise employment size, NAICS 238160. This is the sole quantitative basis for every number in this report.
Tier 2 (credible secondary restating primary data): The Roofing Brief, “US Roofing Contractor Count Report,” which restates the same Census SUSB and County Business Patterns 2022 totals and provided the establishment-level cross-check used here.
Tier 3: none used for numeric claims.

Most Quotable Statistics

90.8% of U.S. roofing employer firms have fewer than 20 employees, but they hold only 39.0% of industry employment (Census SUSB, 2022).
The smallest 81.1% of roofing firms and the largest 0.97% of roofing firms each employ 23.7% of the workforce (Census SUSB, 2022).
Just 18 roofing firms in the United States employ 500 or more workers (Census SUSB, 2022).
Average payroll per worker at the largest roofing firms ($75,462) is 43% higher than at firms with 5 to 9 employees ($52,782) (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).
The 20 to 99 employee class holds 37.4% of all roofing employment, the largest single block (Census SUSB, 2022).
The U.S. roofing industry had 24,044 employer firms and $68.8 billion in receipts in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022).

Data Limitations

SUSB counts only employer firms. Nonemployer roofing businesses (self-employed with no payroll) are excluded, so the true count of roofing businesses is higher than 24,044. Census Nonemployer Statistics for NAICS 238160 could not be retrieved from a primary source for this report and are not estimated here.
Employment is the count for the pay period including March 12, which understates peak seasonal roofing labor.
Payroll per employee is a payroll-divided-by-headcount average, not an individual wage, and excludes benefits and owner draws not run through payroll.
The 1 to 4 employee class is affected by inconsistent working-owner compensation reporting, which distorts its payroll-per-employee figure upward relative to the 5 to 9 class.
SUSB applies noise infusion for disclosure avoidance; small-cell counts and payroll carry low-level noise flags.
All figures are for 2022, the most recent SUSB year available (released April 2025), and are a single-year snapshot, not a trend.

Recommended Downloadable Dataset Fields

naics_code, naics_description, year, geography
enterprise_size_class
firms, share_of_firms
establishments, establishments_per_firm
employment, share_of_employment
annual_payroll_thousands, payroll_per_employee
receipts_thousands, receipts_per_employee
acquisition_density_index (employment_share / firm_share)
source, source_url, noise_flag

Press Summary

The U.S. roofing contractor industry is among the most fragmented building trades in the federal record. Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses data for 2022 show 24,044 employer firms running 24,532 establishments, employing 204,998 workers, with $13.3 billion in payroll and $68.8 billion in receipts. Two-thirds of firms employ four or fewer people, and 90.8% employ fewer than 20, yet those small firms hold only 39.0% of employment. The 234 firms with 100 or more employees, under 1% of the industry by firm count, employ as many roofers (23.7% of the workforce) as the 19,506 smallest firms combined. Pay scales with size: average payroll per worker runs from about $53,000 at firms with 5 to 9 employees to $75,000 at firms with 500 or more. For private-equity consolidators, the data show a long runway of small targets but a thin band of mid-size and large firms that actually hold the workforce, which is where roll-up value concentrates.

Five Headlines Journalists Can Use

“Just 18 U.S. roofing firms employ 500 or more workers, Census data show”
“90% of American roofing firms are small businesses, but they hold under 40% of the jobs”
“The 234 largest roofing firms employ as many workers as the 19,506 smallest”
“Roofing pay climbs 43% from small shops to the largest firms, Census figures show”
“24,044 firms, $68.8 billion: inside America’s fragmented roofing industry”

Frequently Asked Questions

How many roofing companies are there in the United States?

There were 24,044 employer roofing firms operating 24,532 establishments in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022). This excludes nonemployer self-employed roofers, so the total number of roofing businesses is higher.

How fragmented is the roofing industry?

Very. 90.8% of roofing employer firms have fewer than 20 employees, and 65.4% have four or fewer (Census SUSB, 2022).

How many large roofing firms are there?

Only 234 firms had 100 or more employees, and just 18 had 500 or more, in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022).

What share of roofing employment do small firms hold?

Firms with fewer than 20 employees held 39.0% of industry employment in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022).

How many people work in roofing?

The SUSB recorded 204,998 paid employees at roofing employer firms in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022).

What is the average pay in roofing?

Average annual payroll per employee was $64,884 in 2022, ranging from about $52,782 at firms with 5 to 9 employees to $75,462 at firms with 500 or more (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).

How big are roofing firms on average?

The average employer firm had 8.5 employees in 2022, but the median firm is far smaller given that two-thirds employ four or fewer (Census SUSB, 2022, derived).

How much revenue does the roofing industry generate?

Total receipts for employer roofing firms were $68.8 billion in 2022 (Census SUSB, 2022).

Why is roofing a private-equity roll-up target?

Because it is fragmented: with 24,044 firms and most under 20 employees, there is a deep pool of acquisition targets (Census SUSB, 2022). The constraint is that employment concentrates in a thin band of mid-size and large firms.

Does this count self-employed roofers?

No. SUSB counts only employer firms with payroll. Nonemployer (self-employed, no-payroll) roofing businesses are excluded, and primary nonemployer data could not be retrieved for this report (Census SUSB methodology, 2022).

Cite This Research

The Roofing Brief, “Roofing Industry Concentration and Firm-Size Report,” 2026, https://theroofingbrief.com/roofing-industry-concentration-report/. Primary data: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses, 2022.

Embed or reuse with credit: “Source: The Roofing Brief analysis of U.S. Census Bureau SUSB 2022 data (theroofingbrief.com).”