US Home Services Industry Data 2026
A data-driven snapshot of the US home-services and residential-improvement market heading into 2026, built only from verifiable, attributed sources. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies projects home-improvement and repair spending in the $500-billion-plus range, Angi's State of Home Spending reports average household project spend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks construction employment, and BrightLocal documents how consumers find and choose local businesses. Every figure here is sourced. No invented statistics. Use it to benchmark market size, household spend, digital adoption, and the channels that drive home-service leads.
There is no shortage of home-services "statistics" online. There is a serious shortage of sourced ones. Most of the numbers contractors encounter are recycled, unattributed, or invented to close a sale. This article is the opposite: a state-of-the-industry snapshot for 2026 built only from named, verifiable sources — Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Angi's State of Home Spending, and BrightLocal. Every figure carries its source so you can check it.
Use it to benchmark the market you operate in: how big it is, what households actually spend, who works in the trades, and how customers find and choose a business in the first place.
A note on methodology: different sources measure different things (remodeling spend vs. household averages vs. employment), so they are not directly additive. Read each figure in the context of what it actually counts.
Market Size: The Residential Improvement-and-Repair Core
The most authoritative measure of the residential remodeling market is Harvard's Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA), produced by the Joint Center for Housing Studies. LIRA tracks annual spending on improvements and maintenance to owner-occupied homes and projects it forward.
Heading through 2026, JCHS forecasts place owner-occupied home improvement and repair spending in the $500-billion-plus range, in the low-to-mid $500 billions. This is the core of the residential home-services economy — though it does not capture every adjacent service or all new construction, so treat it as the improvement-and-repair heart of a larger whole.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-occupied home improvement & repair spending | $500B+ range (low-to-mid $500B heading through 2026) | JCHS / LIRA |
| Spending trajectory | Modest growth projected after recent normalization | JCHS / LIRA |
The market is large, durable, and homeowner-driven. Demand is tied to the existing housing stock — aging homes require maintenance regardless of the new-construction cycle, which is part of why home services is a resilient category. For how this maps to specific trades, see the industries overview.
Household Spend: What Homeowners Actually Pay
Market totals are abstract; household averages are concrete. Angi's 2024 State of Home Spending Report surveys US homeowners on what they spent across project types.
| Category | 2024 average per household | 2023 average | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total home projects | $12,050 | $13,667 | Angi 2024 State of Home Spending |
| Home improvements | $9,322 | $9,542 | Angi 2024 State of Home Spending |
| Home maintenance | $1,750 | $2,458 | Angi 2024 State of Home Spending |
| Emergency repairs | $978 | $1,667 | Angi 2024 State of Home Spending |
Two things stand out. First, overall spending declined year over year, reflecting a shift toward essential upkeep over discretionary projects as budgets tightened. Second, even in a softer year, the average homeowner spent over $12,000 on home projects — a substantial wallet that the right business captures repeatedly through aftercare and maintenance relationships.
These are survey averages, useful as directional benchmarks rather than precise totals. They are most valuable for sizing the per-customer opportunity in your market and for justifying investment in pricing and retention.
Employment: Who Does the Work
The US trades are a major employment base. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks construction-sector employment through its Current Employment Statistics program and individual trade occupations through the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program and the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Construction is one of the largest employment sectors in the country, and individual trades each number in the hundreds of thousands of workers nationally. Rather than cite a figure that will drift, the responsible approach is to point to the live source:
| Data need | Authoritative source |
|---|---|
| Total construction employment | BLS — Construction, Industries at a Glance |
| Employment & wages by trade occupation | BLS — Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Business counts by industry | US Census Bureau |
For market-sizing at the business level, the Census Bureau County Business Patterns and economic surveys provide establishment counts that help you gauge competitive density in your service area — directly relevant to local SEO strategy and how hard the Google Maps Local Pack will be to crack.
Discovery and Selection: How Customers Find a Contractor
This is where the data becomes operational. A large home-services market means nothing if customers cannot find you — and the evidence on how they search is unambiguous.
BrightLocal's 2024 Local Consumer Review Survey documents consumer behavior toward local businesses:
| Behavior | Figure (2024) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google as most-used platform for reading reviews | 81% of consumers | BrightLocal 2024 |
| Consumers who 'always' or 'regularly' read reviews | 75% | BrightLocal 2024 |
| Consumers who would choose a business that responds to all reviews | 88% | BrightLocal 2024 |
| Consumers who 'never' read reviews | 3% | BrightLocal 2024 |
The implication for home services is direct: online visibility and reputation are the primary discovery and selection mechanism, not an afterthought. Google dominates review reading, three out of four consumers read reviews routinely, and responding to reviews materially affects choice. This is the empirical backbone of Google reviews for home-service businesses and the science of online reviews.
Digital Adoption and Channel Benchmarks
Beyond discovery, the operational question is which channels generate home-service leads and at what efficiency. Vendor benchmark data — used carefully and always attributed — fills this in.
ServiceTitan, a leading field-service platform, publishes home-services benchmark data drawn from its customer base, and Google documents how its own ad and listing products work for the category. Treat vendor data as directional and self-selected (it reflects that vendor's customers), but it is genuinely useful for relative comparison.
| Channel | What it does | Where to read the detail |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile / Local Pack | Captures map-based local search; highest-intent for emergencies | Rank on Google Maps |
| Local Services Ads | Pay-per-lead, verified contractor placement above search | Google Ads for home services |
| Local SEO (service & city pages) | Captures planned, higher-ticket searches | Service and city pages for local SEO |
| Reviews & reputation | Selection filter once a customer finds you | Google reviews guide |
| Generative search (AI Overviews, ChatGPT) | Emerging discovery layer for planned research | How to show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity |
The clear pattern across credible sources is that digital channels — especially Google's surfaces — are now the default discovery path for home services, with reviews acting as the trust filter and AI-driven search beginning to influence planned, research-heavy purchases. The strategic response is covered in the visibility services overview and what GEO means for contractors.
A Caution on Vendor Statistics
It is worth being explicit about the difference between the categories of data in this article. Government sources — the Census Bureau and BLS — are census-grade and methodologically transparent. Academic measurement like JCHS is peer-reviewed in spirit and consistently disclosed. Survey data from Angi and BrightLocal is rigorous but reflects who answered the survey. Vendor benchmarks from platforms reflect that platform's customer base, which skews toward more digitally mature businesses. None of these are wrong — but they answer different questions, and a number lifted from one and presented as another is how misleading "industry stats" are born. When in doubt, ask: who measured this, how, and on whom?
Regional and Seasonal Variation
National figures hide enormous local variation, and acting on a national average in a specific market is a common error. Two dimensions matter most.
Geography
Home-service demand, ticket sizes, and competitive density vary sharply by region. High-cost-of-living metros carry larger average tickets and more competition; rural and exurban markets carry less of both. The Census Bureau is the right source for the local denominators — household counts, owner-occupancy rates, and the age of the housing stock — that shape demand in your specific service area. Older housing stock, in particular, drives repair and replacement demand regardless of the new-construction cycle, which is why some lower-growth regions are nonetheless strong home-service markets.
Season
Most trades are seasonal, and the seasonality is predictable enough to plan around. HVAC peaks in the heat of summer and the cold of winter; roofing follows storm seasons; plumbing carries a winter freeze spike. The Angi data on emergency-repair spending reflects this event-driven pattern. Seasonality is not just a demand fact — it is an operational lever, because the slow periods are exactly when proactive aftercare and maintenance outreach fills the calendar.
| Dimension | Why it matters | Where to source it |
|---|---|---|
| Local household & housing data | Sizes real demand in your area | US Census Bureau |
| Trade seasonality | Plans staffing and outreach | Your own job history + trade norms |
| Competitive density | Sets local-SEO difficulty | Census business counts |
How to Use This Data
A snapshot is only useful if it changes a decision. Three ways to apply these figures:
- Size your local opportunity. Combine the household-spend averages from Angi with Census household and business counts for your service area to estimate addressable demand and competitive density.
- Justify channel investment. Use the BrightLocal discovery data to prioritize Google visibility and reviews ahead of channels with weaker home-service ROI.
- Benchmark, do not copy. Vendor benchmarks are directional. Measure your own cost per lead, conversion, and answer rate against them rather than treating them as targets.
For trade-specific market context, the complete-guide series breaks the numbers down by sector: plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors, roofers, and general contractors and remodelers. Terminology is defined in the glossary, and competitive tooling is compared in the comparisons section.
Trade-Level Context
The aggregate numbers above describe the market as a whole, but every trade sits within it differently. The complete-guide series translates the national picture into sector-specific demand patterns, ticket sizes, and channel priorities — all built on the same sourcing discipline as this article.
| Trade | Demand character | Primary channel emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | Emergency-heavy, year-round, winter freeze spike | Local Pack + Local Services Ads |
| HVAC | Strongly seasonal (summer/winter peaks) | Maintenance plans + seasonal search |
| Electrical | Mixed emergency and planned, safety-driven | Local SEO + reviews |
| Roofing | Event-driven (storms), high ticket | Reviews + paid search + reputation |
| Remodeling / GC | Planned, high ticket, long evaluation | Portfolio content + reviews + GEO |
For the full breakdown by sector, read the plumbers guide, HVAC contractors guide, electricians guide, roofers guide, and general contractors guide. Manufacturers and distributors — window manufacturers, kitchen and bath manufacturers, and building-materials distributors — operate on different dynamics again, covered in their own guides.
The unifying point across every trade is the one the sourced data supports most strongly: discovery and selection have moved online, so visibility and reputation are now the gating factors for capturing an otherwise large and durable demand base.
A Word on Data Integrity
Every figure in this article is attributed to a named, checkable source. That is a deliberate standard, and it is the standard you should hold any home-services data to. If a statistic appears without a source — "90% of customers do X," "the industry is worth $Y trillion" — treat it as marketing copy until you can trace it to the Census Bureau, the BLS, JCHS, Angi, BrightLocal, or another credible institution.
The US home-services market heading into 2026 is large, homeowner-driven, and increasingly won or lost on digital visibility and reputation. Those are the facts the sourced data supports. Build your strategy on them — and on the digital transformation roadmap that turns these numbers into a plan — rather than on the unsourced claims that fill most of the internet.
We answer before we start
Q/01How big is the US home improvement and repair market in 2026?
Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS), through its Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA), projects annual owner-occupied home improvement and repair spending in the $500-billion-plus range, with forecasts placing the market in the low-to-mid $500 billions heading through 2026. This figure covers improvements and maintenance to owner-occupied homes and is the most widely cited authoritative measure of the residential remodeling market. It does not include all of new construction or every adjacent service category, so it is best read as the residential improvement-and-repair core of the broader home-services economy.
Q/02How much does the average US household spend on home projects?
According to Angi's 2024 State of Home Spending Report, US homeowners spent an average of $12,050 on home projects in 2024, down from $13,667 in 2023. Within that, home improvements averaged $9,322 per household, routine home maintenance averaged $1,750, and emergency repairs averaged $978. The year-over-year decline reflected a shift toward essential upkeep over discretionary projects amid tighter budgets. These are survey-based averages across homeowners and are useful as directional benchmarks rather than precise market totals.
Sources & resourcesQ/03How many people work in construction and the trades in the US?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks employment across the construction sector and individual trade occupations through its Current Employment Statistics and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programs. Construction is one of the largest employment sectors in the country, and individual trades — plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, and others — each number in the hundreds of thousands of workers. For current, precise counts and wage data by occupation and state, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and OEWS tables are the authoritative source and are updated regularly.
Q/05Why should I only trust sourced figures when reading home-services industry data?
Because much of the home-services 'data' circulating online is unsourced, recycled, or invented to support a sales pitch. Authoritative figures come from a small set of credible institutions: the US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics for official economic and employment data, Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies for remodeling-market measurement, Angi's State of Home Spending for household survey data, and BrightLocal and similar publishers for consumer-behavior research. When a statistic has no named source, treat it as marketing, not data. Every figure in this article is attributed so you can verify it yourself.
