The U.S. hair, nail and skin care industry is made up of roughly 1.36 million businesses, but only about 113,000 of them have employees; the other 1.24 million are one-person operations such as booth renters and independent stylists. Together they bring in about $80 billion a year, and the average beauty salon with staff takes in $363,000. Every figure below comes from the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How many salons are there in the United States?
There are about 1.36 million hair, nail and skin care businesses in the United States, according to the Census Bureau's two counts of the industry: 112,980 employer firms in the 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses and 1,242,214 nonemployer businesses, meaning owners with no payroll, in the 2022 Nonemployer Statistics. Roughly 92 percent of salon businesses, in other words, have no employees at all.
The employer side runs 124,129 establishments. Beauty salons are the largest group with 72,778 firms, followed by nail salons at 33,653 and barber shops at 6,600. The nonemployer side is even more lopsided toward hair: 823,967 solo beauty-salon businesses, 280,875 solo nail businesses and 137,372 solo barbers. That is the booth-rental and suite-rental model showing up in federal data, and it is why a “salon” on paper is often one chair.
Even among salons that do have staff, the business is tiny. 108,953 of the 112,980 employer firms, or 96.4 percent, have fewer than 20 employees, and 79,251 (70 percent) have fewer than five. A salon with 20 or more people on payroll is a genuine rarity.
How much revenue does the average salon make?
A beauty salon with employees averages about $363,000 a year in receipts, while a solo beauty-salon business, typically a booth renter or independent stylist, averages about $29,500, based on Census totals divided by the number of businesses in each group. The two halves of the industry are almost exactly equal in size: employer salons took in $39.9 billion in 2022 and nonemployer salon businesses took in $40.1 billion.
Within the employer group, beauty salons generated $26.4 billion across 72,778 firms, nail salons $11.6 billion across 33,653 firms (about $346,000 each), and barber shops $1.9 billion across 6,600 firms (about $282,000 each). Size matters a great deal: the 52,055 beauty salons with fewer than five employees averaged about $140,000 in receipts, while the 11,210 salons with five to nine employees averaged about $426,000.
Payroll is the number that explains salon margins. Employer beauty salons paid $11.75 billion in wages against $26.4 billion in receipts, so 44.5 cents of every revenue dollar went to payroll before rent, product, utilities or the owner's own draw. That ratio is why so many owners move to a commission or booth-rental structure as they grow, and why a slow month hurts a salon faster than it hurts a retailer with the same sales. Our guide to salon and spa business loans covers how funders read that payroll-heavy cash flow.
How many people work in salons, and what do they earn?
Barbers, hairstylists and cosmetologists held about 670,800 jobs in 2025 and earned a median of $35,880 a year, or $17.25 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Barbers earned a slightly higher median hourly wage ($18.37) than hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists ($17.21) in May 2025.
Self-employment is the defining feature of the workforce. The BLS reports that 80 percent of the nation's 75,800 barbers and 48 percent of its 595,000 hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists are self-employed; the rest work mostly for personal-care-services employers, with about 5 percent of stylists in retail settings. Census payroll data tells the same story from the employer side: the 112,980 salon firms with staff employ 560,741 people, an average of just five per firm.
Every state requires a license to cut hair, which usually means graduating from a state-approved barber or cosmetology program and passing an exam. Owners who open a shop are therefore buying equipment and signing a lease on top of a credential they already paid for, which is the typical barbershop funding situation: the operator is proven, the business is new.
Is the salon industry growing?
Yes. The BLS projects employment of barbers, hairstylists and cosmetologists to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035, which it classifies as much faster than the average for all occupations, adding about 48,400 jobs over the decade. Because so many stylists move between salons or leave the field, the agency expects about 80,300 openings a year on average, most of them replacement hires rather than new positions.
For an owner, that projection cuts both ways. Demand for services is expected to keep rising, but the same churn that creates openings makes staffing the hardest part of running a chair-based business. Salons that pay stylists on commission carry that risk directly; salons that rent booths push it to the renter but give up control of the client relationship. The payroll ratio above is the lever that decides which model fits a given shop.
Growth also shows up in capital needs. A second location, a nail bar added to a hair salon, or a med-spa service line means equipment, buildout and inventory before the new chairs produce revenue. Our comparison of the best salon and spa funding options and our guide to nail salon funding walk through how equipment financing, lines of credit and revenue-based advances fit a business whose income arrives one appointment at a time. The Broker Shop is a funding broker, not a funder: one application is matched to the funders whose guidelines you meet, so you compare structures side by side instead of taking the first offer. It is free to apply, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many hair salons are in the U.S.?
About 1.36 million hair, nail and skin care businesses operate in the United States: 112,980 employer firms with 124,129 establishments (2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses) plus 1,242,214 nonemployer businesses such as booth renters and independent stylists (2022 Nonemployer Statistics). Beauty salons alone account for 72,778 employer firms and 823,967 solo businesses.
What is the average revenue of a salon?
A beauty salon with employees averaged about $363,000 in annual receipts in 2022 ($26.4 billion across 72,778 firms), while a solo beauty-salon business such as a booth renter averaged about $29,500. Salons with fewer than five employees averaged about $140,000, and salons with five to nine employees about $426,000. Roughly 44.5 cents of every revenue dollar at an employer beauty salon goes to payroll.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Outlook Handbook, Barbers, Hairstylists, and Cosmetologists (2025 employment, median pay, 2025–35 projections, self-employment share) · U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses, firms, establishments, employment, payroll and receipts by NAICS 81211, 812111, 812112, 812113 · U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Nonemployer Statistics, establishments and receipts by NAICS 81211, 812111, 812112, 812113
Found these figures useful? You are welcome to cite or link to this page. Suggested attribution: “Salon & Beauty Industry Statistics 2026,” The Broker Shop — thebrokershopinc.com/salon-industry-statistics-2026.html. Every figure links to its original primary source; averages are computed from the Census totals named above.
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See What I Qualify For →The bottom line: The salon industry is 1.36 million businesses that are overwhelmingly one-person or under-five-person shops, with payroll taking 44.5 cents of every dollar at salons that employ staff; the owners who grow are the ones who match their staffing model and their financing to income that arrives one appointment at a time.