Retail Trade ·NAICS 4441

NAICS 4441 · IRS SOI 2023 · Census CBP

Building Material and Supplies Dealers - Industry Benchmarks

2,165 SBA loans on record, $1.7B in volume, for NAICS 4441.

1.8%
Net margin
N/A
Workers employed
N/A
Avg payroll / employee
$1.7B
SBA lending, FY20–26

Data updated July 2026

The verdict · NAICS 4441

Building Material and Supplies Dealers runs a 1.8% pre-tax net margin - significantly below average, typical of high-volume, low-margin sectors - across 56K establishments employing N/A workers.

1.8%
Pre-tax net margin (IRS SOI)
N/A
Workers employed (Census CBP)
N/A
Avg payroll / employee
$1.7B
SBA lending, FY20–26

Benchmarking Insights for Building Material and Supplies Dealers

Building Material and Supplies Dealers sits inside Retail Trade at a 1.8% net margin (significantly below average, typical of high-volume, low-margin sectors), $60.5B in aggregate receipts across 17,528 returns, averaging $3.4B per establishment.

55,545 establishments employ N/A workers. Illinois leads employment, followed by Michigan and Indiana.

Profit Margin

1.8%

Net income ÷ total receipts (IRS SOI)

Total Receipts

$60.5B

Annual revenue (IRS SOI)

Net Income

$1.1B

Pre-tax net income

Employment

N/A

Total employees (Census CBP)

Avg Payroll / Employee

N/A

Annual compensation

Establishments

55,545

Business locations

Release-over-release change

What changed from Census CBP 2022 to 2023

establishment count increased by 207. This comparison uses two published national Census County Business Patterns releases; suppressed fields are omitted rather than estimated.

Where each dollar of Building Material and Supplies Dealers revenue goes

Building Material and Supplies Dealers margin vs national reference points

Building Material and Supplies Dealers net margin 6.0%
Cross-industry median (5%)

p25/median/p75 = 3%/5%/8%

Business Structure Breakdown

How businesses in this industry are legally structured (IRS SOI)

C Corporation
17,528 returns 100%

Margin: 1.8% · Receipts: $60.5B

Financial Detail

Total Tax Returns Filed
17,528
Avg Receipts per Business
$3.4B

Sub-Industries

Industry Profit Margin
Hardware Stores

NAICS 44413

 N/A
Home Centers

NAICS 44411

 N/A
Other Building Material Dealers

NAICS 44419

 N/A
Paint and Wallpaper Stores

NAICS 44412

 N/A

Top States by Employment

State Employment
Illinois 44,990
Michigan 40,514
Indiana 28,153
Wisconsin 26,046
Minnesota 23,957
Iowa 12,986
Kansas 11,804
Nebraska 8,874
Idaho 8,295
Montana 6,522

Showing top 10 of 51 states

SBA Lending Activity

SBA FY2020–2026

SBA Loans Approved

2,165

Total Loan Volume

$1.7B

Avg Loan Size

$785K

Jobs Supported

22,548

Program Breakdown

7(a) 1,814 (84%)
504 351 (16%)

Top SBA Lender

Live Oak Banking Company

122 loans in this industry

New Business Share

24.5% of borrowers were new/startup businesses

Annual Lending Trend (7 yrs)

2020
300
2021
471
2022
327
2023
298
2024
328
2025
380
2026
61

View SBA lending rankings →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average revenue for Building Material and Supplies Dealers?
$60.5B in total annual receipts across all Building Material and Supplies Dealers businesses. Average per business: $3.4B.
How profitable is Building Material and Supplies Dealers?
1.8% net profit margin, significantly below average, typical of high-volume, low-margin sectors.
How many businesses are in Building Material and Supplies Dealers?
55,545 business establishments.
What is the average payroll per employee in Building Material and Supplies Dealers?
Average payroll data for Building Material and Supplies Dealers is not available in the current Census CBP dataset.
Which states have the most Building Material and Supplies Dealers employment?
Illinois leads with 44,990 workers. Michigan (40,514) and Indiana (28,153) round out the top three.
How much SBA lending does Building Material and Supplies Dealers receive?
Building Material and Supplies Dealers businesses received 2,165 SBA loans totaling $1.7 billion between FY2020 and FY2026. The average loan size was $785K. These loans supported 22,548 jobs at origination. Most lending (84%) came through the SBA 7(a) program.

Comparable industry benchmarks

These links are calculated from the current national dataset. They are comparison paths, not recommendations or evidence that businesses operate alike.

How this ranks: Building Material and Supplies Dealers reports a higher net margin than 12% of the 126 IRS-tracked industries at the same NAICS detail level. Calculated by ranking this industry's reported value against every other industry at the same NAICS digit-level, not the whole dataset: comparing a 6-digit detail industry to a 2-digit sector would mix incompatible scales.

Closest reported net margins

Same NAICS detail level, ordered by the smallest difference in reported IRS pre-tax margin.

Benchmarking Building Material and Supplies Dealers

Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.

Sources: IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) Business Tax Statistics · Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023

NAICS 4441 · Data year: 2023

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which released its 2023 County Business Patterns dataset in June 2025, PlainBizBench benchmarks 2,002 U.S. industries against Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income data. See our methodology for the full compilation process.

Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns / SUSB Industry employment scale, payroll, and firm-size benchmarks · 2023

Every figure on PlainBizBench is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page aggregates profit-margin, payroll, entity-type, and SBA-lending benchmarks for this industry, live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.

Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.