Residential Remodeling Count Rose 6.2% in 2015, Census Bureau Finds

The number of residential remodeling firms nationwide grew by 6.2% in 2015 from the previous year, the biggest annual change this decade, fresh data from the Census Bureau finds.

The agency’s latest Statistics of U.S. Business, updated in late September, said the number of residential remodeling companies rose to 98,104 from 92,383. Meanwhile, the number of employees at those firms increased 7.6%, to 318,767 from 2014’s 296,326.

Just under 83% of those businesses had zero to four employees and another 10.8% had five to nine on the payroll. In contrast, just 152 businesses had a minimum of 100 workers.

Here’s how things looked in 2015 alone:

Employee counts have changed more dramatically year-to-year than the number of firms has. In 2003, the average stood at 3.69 workers per firm. The housing crash of 2008 and 2009 sent the average down to 3.01 per company, but in 2015 the average had risen to 3.25.