National benchmark report · IRS SOI & Census CBP 2023
U.S. industry financial benchmarks, measured from public data
This report summarizes 2,002 NAICS-coded industry records in PlainBizBench's live database. Use it to understand the range of reported industry benchmarks, then open a specific industry page before applying any number to a business decision.
Compiled byPlainBizBench, Industry Data Editorial Process
2,002
Industry records
4.7%
Middle reported margin
139,818,550
Employment in sector rollups
What the database shows
Across employment-meaningful industry records, the middle reported pre-tax profit margin is 4.7%. The middle half of the comparison runs from 2.9% to 7.5%. Those are aggregate industry benchmarks, not a forecast or a target margin for an individual company.
24
NAICS sectors
178
Records with a reported margin
8,361,342
Establishments in sector rollups
2023
Data year
Profit margin is calculated as net income divided by total receipts in the IRS source. Payroll and employment are supplied by Census County Business Patterns. The portal does not estimate suppressed or missing values.
How to read this national report
The source tables aggregate businesses by NAICS industry. They are useful for comparing industry-level financial and operating patterns, but they do not describe a specific company, worker, state, or local market. A reported margin can differ with company size, ownership structure, accounting treatment, geography, and the mix of firms inside an industry code.
The most defensible use is a two-step comparison: find the closest NAICS benchmark, then read its source context and limits alongside the national distribution. The percentile tool can place a margin in that same reported distribution without implying that the result predicts a business outcome.
Where the employment base is concentrated
Largest NAICS sector rollups by reported employment · Census County Business Patterns 2023.
This chart shows reported employment totals in broad sector rollups. It is context for the benchmark archive, not a ranking of industry quality or opportunity.
Highest reported profit margins in the current 3-digit comparison
The table is a transparent entry point to the current database, not a recommendation list. Open an industry page to see its reported receipts, employment, source context, and limits.
Ten 3-digit NAICS industries with the highest reported profit margins
This page queries the live PlainBizBench database at request time. Profit-margin figures come from IRS Statistics of Income business tax statistics and are calculated as reported net income divided by reported total receipts. Employment and establishment totals come from Census County Business Patterns. The national quartiles use industry records with reported margins, NAICS level 3 or deeper, and more than 10,000 employees so very small records do not drive the headline range.
IRS and Census releases have different publication schedules and coverage rules. The report preserves those source boundaries rather than blending, interpolating, or projecting data. Read the methodology and source notes before reusing a figure, and cite the underlying government datasets where their original publication is the appropriate source.
Open data
Download the reported industry benchmark fields
The data layer documents the exact fields in this report and provides a CSV extract of the live industry table. It preserves missing source values as blank cells rather than estimating them.
Every figure on PlainBizBench is rendered directly from federal source data,
no number is typed in by an editor. This report queries the current portal database. IRS SOI supplies reported financial aggregates; Census County Business Patterns 2023 supplies employment and establishment context. No estimates are substituted for missing source values. 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.