How Many Car Dealerships Are in the US? #
The United States had 47,057 car dealerships with paid employees (Census County Business Patterns, 2023). Adding the 125,786 dealers who operate with no paid employees (Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023) gives a combined 172,843 dealer businesses.
The two halves of that total are different kinds of business, and it is worth separating them before using either figure. The first counts staffed places of business: a lot with a sales floor, a service bay and a payroll. The second counts registered businesses that file a tax return under a dealer code but employ nobody, which in practice means brokers, wholesalers, part-time resellers and single-owner lots.
Dealerships with staff have changed little in number since 2017, and they employ about 1.3 million people (Census CBP, 2023). That stability is the headline finding: consolidation in this industry has moved ownership rather than closing storefronts.
New Car and Used Car Dealers #
Census splits dealerships in two. Used car dealers are the larger group by count; new car dealers are much larger by payroll.
| Type | Locations with paid employees | Employees |
|---|---|---|
| New car dealers | 21,910 | 1,131,340 |
| Used car dealers | 25,147 | 162,048 |
| All car dealers | 47,057 | 1,293,388 |
Source: Census County Business Patterns (2023). The gap between the two rows is the single most useful thing on this page. There are more used car lots than new car dealerships, yet new car dealerships employ roughly seven times as many people. A typical new car dealership is a much larger operation than a typical used car lot.
The reason is structural rather than commercial. A franchised new car dealership carries a service department, a parts counter, a body shop in many cases, and a finance office, because the franchise agreement and the manufacturer's warranty work require them. Those departments carry headcount that has nothing to do with selling a car. An independent used car lot can operate with a manager, a salesperson and an outsourced reconditioning arrangement.
Want the full how many car dealerships in the us data?
Complete data with 5-year forecasts, geographic breakdowns, and competitive analysis. Every data point sourced and cited.
What Counts as a Car Dealership #
Census classifies a business by its primary activity, and the boundary between the two dealer codes is the condition of the inventory that drives most of the revenue.
New Car Dealers (NAICS 441110) comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing new automobiles and light trucks, such as sport utility vehicles and passenger and cargo vans, or retailing these new vehicles in combination with activities such as repair services, retailing used cars, and selling replacement parts and accessories. The phrase "in combination with" carries the weight: a franchised dealership that sells used cars, runs a service department and operates a parts counter is still a single new car dealer establishment, not four businesses.
Used Car Dealers (NAICS 441120) comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing used automobiles and light trucks. Census gives antique auto dealers and used-only light truck dealers as examples of the code. An establishment lands here when it sells only used vehicles; if it sells new vehicles at all as its primary line, it moves to 441110 regardless of how much used inventory it also moves.
Several businesses that the public would call car dealers sit outside both codes. Recreational vehicle, boat and motorcycle dealers are classified separately under other vehicle dealers. Parts and accessory retailers, tire dealers, car rental companies and wholesale auto auctions are each classified in their own industries and none of them appear in the figures above.
Why Dealership Counts Differ Depending on Who Is Counting #
Published dealership counts vary by tens of thousands, and the disagreement is almost never about data quality. It is about the unit being counted. There are four units in common use and they are not interchangeable.
A location is what Census counts. A dealer group operating six lots is six establishments in County Business Patterns, because the program counts physical places that had payroll during the year.
A franchise is a manufacturer's agreement to sell a brand. A single building can hold three franchises, so franchise counts run well ahead of location counts for the new car side of the trade.
A rooftop is the industry's own term, and it usually means a dealership location, but different publishers apply it to franchises or to legal entities without saying so.
A license is what a state motor vehicle department issues. License registries include wholesale-only dealers, brokers and businesses that never held retail inventory, so state totals are the largest of the four and the least comparable across states.
Dealers Without Employees #
Most car dealers in the country have no payroll at all: 125,786 of them (Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023), against 47,057 with staff.
Nonemployer Statistics is built from business tax records rather than a survey, which means it captures activity that never appears in an employment count. A dealer in this group has receipts and a tax filing under a dealer code, and no employees on a payroll. That is the independent end of the trade: single-owner lots where the owner is the only person working, wholesalers who move vehicles between dealers and auctions, brokers who source cars to order, and online resellers operating without premises.
Census publishes no nonemployer row for new car dealers, so the whole nonemployer total sits with used vehicle sellers. This makes sense on inspection. A manufacturer franchise agreement requires facilities, a service department and staff, so a new car dealership without a single employee is close to a contradiction in terms.
How We Counted #
Dealerships with paid employees come from County Business Patterns, which counts each location that had payroll during the year across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. A dealer group with several lots is counted once per lot. The reference period is the pay period including 12 March, so a location that opened in April or closed in February is treated accordingly.
Dealers with no paid employees come from Nonemployer Statistics, which Census builds from tax records. Because it is an administrative source rather than a survey, it covers businesses too small to sample reliably, and it excludes businesses with any payroll at all, so the two programs do not overlap and can be added.
The two releases use different editions of the industry classification, County Business Patterns on the 2017 edition and Nonemployer Statistics on the 2022 edition. The dealer codes carry the same numbers and the same two-way split in both, which is why the two are shown together here. That is not true of every industry: gasoline stations were renumbered between the editions, and grocery retail was redrawn to take in a category that sat outside it before, so a combined count is not automatically safe.
Both programs suppress cells that would disclose an individual business. Suppression bites hardest at detailed geography, which is why a national total is more complete than the sum of the county figures beneath it.
What the Count Does Not Show #
A national total does not show where dealerships are, what they sell, or what they earn. Those are the questions a count invites and cannot answer.
| Question | On this page | In the report |
|---|---|---|
| How many dealerships are there | Yes | Yes |
| New versus used split | Yes | Yes |
| Dealerships by state | No | Yes |
| Industry receipts and revenue per location | No | Yes |
| Employment trend across years | No | Yes |
| Market concentration | No | Yes |
Get the reports: New car dealers → · Used car dealers →
The state-by-state breakdown, revenue and the trend over time are in our New Car Dealers and Used Car Dealers reports, built from the same federal sources with the dataset and year printed beside every figure.
For the economics of running one, see car dealership profit margins and used car dealership profit margins. For what it costs to open a lot, see used car dealership startup costs.