RootOptics · the United States

Roofing Contractors — the public record

Roofing Contractors · the United States

Where this industry stands

MeasureValue
Net establishment formation, 5yr+2.17%
Standing among all industries77th of 287
Reads asforming faster than it is dying
Signal strength, backtestedρ 0.57 over 4 windows

Among 287 industries, this one sits at the 77th percentile on net establishment formation over 2019-2023 — it is forming faster than it is dying. That signal carries a measured rank correlation of 0.57 with the following decade's growth across 4 backtested windows, separating top and bottom deciles by 42.6 percentage points. It describes the INDUSTRY, not a business in it, and it was calibrated against establishment growth rather than returns to an operator.

The market

MeasureValue
Operators24,373
People employed210,498
Pay per employee$70,794
What the work isRoofers
Median wage, that occupation$50,680
Licensed in16 jurisdictions

What the public record can and cannot evidence

DimensionWeightEvidencePredicts?
O1 · Demand density and recurrence25evidencedpredictive
O2 · Payment evidence15partialnot backtested
O3 · Licence gate favourability15evidencednot backtested
O4 · Labour availability15evidencednot backtested
O5 · Incumbent weakness10no producernot backtested
O6 · Margin structure10partialnot backtested
O7 · Ceiling10evidencedDESCRIPTIVE ONLY

65 of 100 rubric points are evidenced, 25 partially, 10 have no producer. No total score is rendered from that. PREDICTS is a separate question from EVIDENCE: a dimension can rest on a real sourced figure and have no measured relationship with what happens next.

Can you borrow to buy one

MeasureValue
Acquisition loans approved2,276
Median loan$122,182
Mean rate7.48%
Mean term116 months
Charged off9.5%

9.5% of resolved SBA acquisition loans in this industry were charged off, across 910 loans that have actually reached an outcome. Cohorts from FY2021 onward are EXCLUDED from this rate: a loan approved recently has not had time to fail, and counting it would make every industry look safe. SBA 7(a) FOIA data, FY2010–FY2026. Loans to acquire an EXISTING business, separated from start-up lending by the SBA's own business-age field. Charge-off is measured on RESOLVED loans only — a loan approved last year has not had time to fail.

What it costs to produce

MeasureValue
Margin on receipts52.4%
Computed asvalue added — receipts less cost of subcontracted work
Industry receipts$69.9bn

Computed by the Census Bureau, not by us. Economic Census 2022. Census collects a cost structure for this sector and collects none for most service industries; where it does not, this document shows labour share and refuses to call it a margin.

What firms here actually earn

Revenue band ($000)FirmsShareLabour share of revenue
<1004,63219.3%38.7%
100-4997,42230.9%30.6%
500-9992,59310.8%25.6%
1,000-2,4994,01816.7%20.9%
2,500-4,9992,47810.3%18.4%
5,000-7,4999994.2%19.0%
7,500-9,9995042.1%18.7%
10,000-14,9995462.3%19.0%
15,000-19,9992861.2%19.7%
20,000-24,9991580.7%17.8%
25,000-29,999880.4%18.9%
30,000-34,999530.2%19.5%
35,000-39,999600.2%16.8%
40,000-49,999520.2%18.8%
50,000-74,999820.3%18.0%
75,000-99,999270.1%17.9%
100,000+460.2%18.1%

Payroll is 19.3% of receipts industry-wide across 24,044 firms. LABOUR SHARE, NOT MARGIN: Census publishes receipts and payroll and never cost of goods, so gross margin cannot be derived and is not claimed here. Enterprise receipts — a firm counted once at its total size, not per location. Census SUSB 2022.

What we do not hold

Gap
licence coverage — the register holds 54 of 56 US licensing jurisdictions, and 2,504 of its records carry no jurisdiction at all. A count of 16 is out of 54 searched, not out of 56. The unsearched jurisdictions are not evidence of no licence.
bonding_required_usd — no producer, and not estimated

Stated rather than filled. An absence of match is not an absence of fact.

Verification

This document's content hash is below. Anyone can check it at ro.8thwavemedia.com/verify without an account and without taking our word for anything. A single altered character produces a completely different hash, so a document that verifies is a document nobody has revised.

054664e3dd011a2a7cfe2c8bd619cd949f8f4298b5ad207a77f04896a817ac26

Issued 13 August 2026 at 18:24 UTC · rubric O1.0-20260804

Do not expect sha256sum of this file to match. A document cannot contain its own hash — adding the hash would change it. The hash above covers the report content as issued, excluding this verification panel. That is stated here rather than left to be discovered, because a reader who hashes the file, gets a different answer and concludes the document was tampered with would be wrong for a reason we created.

Computed from United States federal public records. Census County Business Patterns, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, the CareerOneStop occupational licence register, Census Business Dynamics Statistics and USASpending. Licence data derives from CareerOneStop, sponsored by the US Department of Labor, ETA.

Research against public records — not investment, legal, tax or accounting advice. No figure here is a prediction about your business. Figures describe an INDUSTRY; a business within it may do better or worse for reasons no public dataset records. Gaps are stated rather than filled: where a dimension has no evidence it is marked absent rather than estimated.

8th Wave Media LLC · ro.8thwavemedia.com