Roofing Industry Statistics

Roofing is a small, young, seasonal and dangerous trade, and the numbers below show each of those. We collected them at BlueCollarStacks while writing about estimating, CRM and production software for roofers. Workforce and safety figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, business counts from the Census Bureau, insurance data from the Insurance Information Institute, and cost data from the Cost vs. Value report. Contractor surveys from Roofing Contractor magazine and ServiceTitan are labeled. We opened every source in October 2026.

Key takeaways

Roofing is the most dangerous trade we cover by a wide margin. Roofers died at a rate of 48.7 per 100,000 full-time workers in 2024, almost 15 times the all-worker rate and about seven times the rate for plumbers or HVAC techs. Falls, slips and trips alone killed 370 construction and extraction workers that year. For an owner, that shows up in workers' comp premiums, OSHA paperwork and the cost of every crew member who gets hurt.

The workforce is young and learns on the job. The median roofer is 36.6, more than five years younger than the average worker, and only about 12% are 55 or older. No formal credential is typically required. Close to two-thirds of roofers are Hispanic or Latino, which matters for training materials, safety talks and the language settings in whatever crew app you use.

Most roofing companies are small, and many are one person. Census counts 25,519 roofing contractor locations with payroll, 80% of them under 10 employees, and BLS says 20% of roofers are self-employed. Employment at roofing contractors grew 5.0% from 2022 to 2023, faster than the 3.2% at plumbing and HVAC contractors.

Pay is lower and the calendar is lumpier than in other trades. The median roofer made $55,440 in May 2025, more than $8,000 less than the median plumber. BLS notes that roofing work may be limited in winter in northern states, while crews often work overtime in the busy summer months. Hiring has moved online: 59% of contractors in Roofing Contractor's survey recruit through online job postings, and the share naming a lack of qualified workers as a top concern dropped from 43% to 36%. That's still the second-biggest worry on the list.

Storms drive the work. Wind and hail made up 42.5% of homeowners insurance losses in 2023, with an average claim of $14,747. That's why many residential roofers build their business around storm and insurance work, and why measurement reports, drone photos and supplement documentation are core tools. A full asphalt replacement averaged $31,871 in the 2025 Cost vs. Value report.

Roofers adopt tech faster than their reputation suggests. In Roofing Contractor's survey, 40% use AI, 58% use a CRM, 54% use drones and more than half use aerial measurement tools. ServiceTitan's survey found production management is the top reason contractors pick software. If you're comparing systems, our guide to software for roofing businesses covers the tools top shops use for measurements, estimates, insurance supplements and crew scheduling.

Methodology

Government sources came first: the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Current Population Survey and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, and Census County Business Patterns. We added the Insurance Information Institute's summary of ISO claims data and the Journal of Light Construction's Cost vs. Value report. Contractor surveys from Roofing Contractor magazine and ServiceTitan are labeled as trade press and vendor research. Roofing Contractor's respondents are its own subscribers, 69% of them residential, so its percentages describe that audience rather than every roofer in the country. Every figure was checked against the publisher's page or file in October 2026.

Where we calculated something, such as the small-business share or employment growth, the stat says so and shows the counts. We left out several widely quoted roofing workforce figures because we couldn't trace them to an original NRCA or government source.

How to cite this page

Feel free to quote any figure here, and credit the original source listed under it. If this page helped, please link back as "Roofing Industry Statistics, BlueCollarStacks, checked October 2026." If you spot a number its publisher has revised, let us know and we'll update it.