Commercial moving industry data (NAICS 484210)

Six years of the federal government's own employment and wage count for household and office movers, and the two trends in it worth knowing before assuming this is a growing industry.

The federal government tracks this industry through the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, industry code 484210. Two things stand out across six straight years of that count. Employment has fallen every year since 2022, and average pay has risen every single year over the same stretch, including the years employment was falling. The number of establishments in the industry has also been shrinking since 2023, a distinction from company counts worth unpacking on its own, further down.

What this data does and does not cover

BLS tracks this industry under one federal code, 484210, titled "Used household and office goods moving." That single classification includes movers who mostly do residential jobs and movers who mostly do office, IT, laboratory or machinery relocation together. BLS does not publish a version split by which kind of customer a company mostly serves, so every figure below is the combined household-and-office total, not a commercial-only figure.

The figures are also national and private-sector only. State-level detail exists in the same dataset but is not reproduced here, and government-operated moving operations are excluded by BLS's own reporting convention for this series.

Source: BLS QCEW industry title, NAICS 484210

Six years of the same federal count

Year	Establishments	Employment	Avg weekly wage	Avg annual pay
2020	8,908	94,706	$813	$42,282
2021	9,475	100,769	$866	$45,036
2022	9,963	103,458	$903	$46,968
2023	10,130	98,498	$925	$48,088
2024	9,944	93,872	$952	$49,484
2025	9,795	91,129	$984	$51,165

2025 is the most recent full year BLS has published for this series. Figures are annual averages, not calendar-year totals.

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 484210, national annual averages

Fewer people do this work than three years ago

Employment in this combined household-and-office moving classification peaked in 2022 at 103,458 people and has fallen every year since, to 91,129 in 2025. That is a decline of 11.9% across three straight years.

Average pay moved the other way across the same stretch. In each of the five year-over-year comparisons between 2020 and 2025 it rose, for a cumulative increase of 21.0% across the six years and 8.9% since the 2022 employment peak alone.

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 484210, national annual averages

Fewer locations are open too, and that isn't the same as fewer companies

BLS counts this industry a second way in the same dataset: by establishment, not just by employee. Establishment count peaked a year later than employment, in 2023 at 10,130, and has fallen for two straight years since, to 9,795 in 2025, down 3.3% from the peak.

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 484210, national annual averages

An establishment in BLS's own usage is a single physical location, not a business. BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages defines it as a single economic unit "typically at one physical location," and states plainly that "a firm, or a company, is a business and may consist of one or more establishments." This industry code is full of multi-branch, van-line-affiliated operators, so the gap matters here: one company running a dozen branches shows up as a dozen establishments, and a falling establishment count is not, by itself, evidence that companies are leaving the industry. BLS runs a separate program, Business Employment Dynamics, for company-level counts; this page counts locations, because that is what BLS's own QCEW series counts.

Source: BLS, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Questions and Answers

Average employment per establishment, our own division of the two BLS figures above rather than a ratio BLS itself publishes, fell from 10.39 people per establishment in 2022 to 9.30 in 2025, about 10.4% lower.

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 484210, national annual averages

Three readings fit the same numbers

The data does not explain why employment, pay and establishment count moved the way they did. A shrinking workforce commanding higher pay is consistent with the industry finding it harder to hire and keep experienced crews. It is equally consistent with the industry consolidating into fewer, larger companies that need fewer total locations to do the same volume of work. And it is consistent with a third possibility the establishment count alone cannot rule out: the same companies closing individual branches without a single company actually exiting the industry. All three read the same six years of numbers differently, and nothing in this dataset picks between them.

What we tried to check and could not

BLS also publishes injury and illness rates by industry, which would have made a useful safety comparison for this page. Its tables blocked automated access entirely, so that figure is left out rather than pulled from a secondary summary we could not check against the original table.

FMCSA separately publishes a live count of active household-goods-registered carriers on a dashboard that only renders in a browser. Search summaries of it returned two figures more than 13 times apart, which is itself a sign neither is reliable, so neither appears here.

The industry-wide numbers on this page say nothing about any one company's registration or safety record. How to verify a commercial mover covers the free federal checks worth running before you sign with one.

Sources

All fetched directly from BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Open Data API on 2026-08-07: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 annual averages, NAICS 484210, plus the BLS QCEW industry title record for the classification's exact name.

The establishment-versus-company distinction is BLS's own, from its QCEW Questions and Answers page, re-confirmed live on 2026-08-10. Company-level counts live in BLS's separate Business Employment Dynamics program, which this page does not use.