The finding
Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities has the highest reported average annual payroll per employee in this comparison at $260,466/yr, while Food Services and Drinking Places is lowest at $24,695/yr. That is a $235,771/yr difference, or about 10.5 times the lower benchmark; it describes industry-level payroll, not an individual worker's pay.
- 73
- Industries compared
- $260,466/yr
- Highest: Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities
- $66,808/yr
- Middle industry benchmark
- $24,695/yr
- Lowest: Food Services and Drinking Places
Average payroll per employee equals reported annual payroll divided by reported employment. It is a cross-industry benchmark, not a wage offer, salary survey, or cost-of-living adjustment.
What this comparison measures
This note compares Census County Business Patterns 2023 payroll and employment totals for 3-digit NAICS industries. PlainBizBench divides each industry's reported annual payroll by its reported employment, then limits the comparison to industries with at least 10,000 employees. That threshold avoids turning very small or suppressed records into a broad national claim.
The result is useful for asking how an industry's payroll benchmark compares with other industries. It cannot tell a reader what a specific job, company, state, or worker earns. Industry mix, occupation, hours, geography, benefits, and the Census program's coverage all affect actual compensation.
The highest reported payroll benchmarks
How to use the result without over-reading it
The comparison is most useful as a starting point for a business or labor-market question. A high industry benchmark can reflect a different mix of occupations, locations, capital requirements, or firm sizes; it does not establish that every employer or employee in that industry is paid at that level. For a specific industry, open its benchmark page to review its employment, revenue, profit-margin, and source context together.
The lower end of the table is not a quality ranking. It only identifies the lower reported payroll-per-employee figures among the included industry aggregates. Readers should not use it to infer effort, skill, business value, or an individual's likely pay.
Method and source
PlainBizBench queries the live portal database at request time. The database's Census County Business Patterns 2023 records supply annual payroll and employment totals; average payroll per employee is their quotient. The query includes NAICS level 3 industries with non-null payroll-per-employee values and at least 10,000 reported employees, sorted by the calculated benchmark. You can inspect the underlying industry rows in the payroll rankings and read the portal's methodology and data limitations.