Bar business survival rates are best understood by separating bar-specific business counts from broader hospitality survival benchmarks. In 2023, the U.S. had 40,835 employer establishments classified as drinking places, while the available long-run survival tables cover all accommodation and food-services establishments rather than bars alone. Together, these sources show the scale of the bar sector and how establishment survival and employment change with age.
Table of contents
- What official statistics count as a bar business
- Early survival rates in the hospitality benchmark
- Longer-run survival paths
- Openings, closures, and job churn
- Establishment age and employment scale
- Gross job gains and losses by age
What official statistics count as a bar business
The Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns classification for drinking places is NAICS 722410, “Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages).” This is the closest bar-specific scope in the supplied official figures. It includes bars, taverns, nightclubs, and other drinking places, so it is broader than any one operating format.
For the United States in 2023, County Business Patterns reported 40,835 employer establishments in this classification. Those establishments employed 432,542 people, and their annual payroll totaled $11,078,437 thousand. The payroll figure is reported in thousands of dollars, so it should be read as an official aggregate payroll measure rather than as an average wage estimate.
The establishment count also shows how concentrated the sector is among smaller operations. The following figures are Census counts by employee-size class for 2023:
| Employee size | Drinking places |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 5 | 15,813 |
| 5–9 | 11,197 |
| 10–19 | 8,220 |
| 20–49 | 4,610 |
| 50–99 | 829 |
| 100–249 | 153 |
| 250–499 | 8 |
| 500–999 | 3 |
The smallest categories dominate the reported distribution: 15,813 establishments had fewer than five employees, and another 11,197 had between five and nine. By comparison, only eight establishments had 250–499 employees and three had 500–999. This does not measure profitability or survival, but it does establish the operating context for interpreting bar-business risk: the official sector count is made up largely of small employer establishments.
County Business Patterns also reported 18,816 S-corporation drinking-place establishments in 2023. That is a legal-form count, not a survival rate. It helps describe the business population, but it should not be used to infer that one ownership structure is more durable than another.
Early survival rates in the hospitality benchmark
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes survival-by-opening-cohort tables for the broader NAICS 72 Accommodation and Food Services category. These are not bar-only observations. They include accommodation businesses as well as food-service businesses, and the figures below should therefore be used as a hospitality benchmark for bar planning, not as a direct estimate of the probability that a particular bar will remain open.
For establishments that opened in the year ended March 1994, the BLS reported the following path:
| Time after opening | Share surviving |
|---|---|
| One year, March 1995 | 79.9% |
| Two years, March 1996 | 68.2% |
| Three years, March 1997 | 61.0% |
| Four years, March 1998 | 54.4% |
| Five years, March 1999 | 49.4% |
The March 1995 opening cohort followed a similar early pattern. BLS reported that 79.7% survived to March 1996, 68.7% survived to March 1997, 60.2% survived to March 1998, and 54.1% survived to March 1999. The two cohorts are close at comparable ages, but they are still separate cohorts measured in different calendar periods.
These figures describe the share of establishments from each opening cohort that remained in the BLS survival population at the stated measurement date. They do not say that exactly the same businesses retained the same owners, employees, menu, location, or concept. For a bar operator, the practical value is in the age pattern: the benchmark shows substantial attrition during the first five years, with the surviving share falling below one-half for the March 1994 cohort by its fifth measurement.
Longer-run survival paths
The BLS tables also track the same broad hospitality cohorts much farther into their operating lives. For the March 1994 opening cohort, 36.8% survived nine years after opening, measured in March 2003. The reported surviving share was 26.2% at sixteen years in March 2010, 20.1% at twenty-four years in March 2018, 16.1% at twenty-nine years in March 2023, and 14.7% at thirty-one years in March 2025.
For the March 1995 cohort, the available long-run points were 40.0% at eight years in March 2003, 28.4% at fifteen years in March 2010, 21.4% at twenty-three years in March 2018, and 15.9% at thirty years in March 2025.
The comparison below keeps the cohort and measurement year visible rather than presenting the observations as a single universal bar survival curve.
| Opening cohort | Measurement point | Survival share | Measurement date |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 1994 | 9 years | 36.8% | March 2003 |
| March 1994 | 16 years | 26.2% | March 2010 |
| March 1994 | 24 years | 20.1% | March 2018 |
| March 1994 | 29 years | 16.1% | March 2023 |
| March 1994 | 31 years | 14.7% | March 2025 |
| March 1995 | 8 years | 40.0% | March 2003 |
| March 1995 | 15 years | 28.4% | March 2010 |
| March 1995 | 23 years | 21.4% | March 2018 |
| March 1995 | 30 years | 15.9% | March 2025 |
The most important limitation is scope. These are official BLS survival figures for Accommodation and Food Services, not a bar-only series. They are useful for understanding the shape of long-run establishment survival in a related industry, but they do not establish the survival rate of NAICS 722410 drinking places specifically.
Openings, closures, and job churn
Survival rates describe whether establishments remain in operation, while job-flow statistics show the employment movement associated with establishments of different ages. The BLS gross job gains and losses table for Accommodation and Food Services reported 673,544 gross job gains at establishments less than one year old in March 1994. The corresponding employment count for establishments less than one year old was also 673,544 in the BLS age-and-employment table for that month.
The closing-related job losses reported for successive ages were:
- One-year-old establishments recorded 82,500 job losses from closing establishments in March 1995.
- Two-year-old establishments recorded 65,108 such job losses in March 1996.
- Three-year-old establishments recorded 44,939 in March 1997.
- Four-year-old establishments recorded 39,764 in March 1998.
- Five-year-old establishments recorded 34,255 in March 1999.
- Six-year-old establishments recorded 32,107 in March 2000.
- Seven-year-old establishments recorded 25,286 in March 2001.
- Eight-year-old establishments recorded 23,292 in March 2002.
These are gross job losses attributed to closing establishments in the broader hospitality category. They are not the number of bars that closed, and they are not net employment changes. A business can remain open while changing staff, and a closing establishment can be replaced by a new establishment; gross flows capture movement rather than a simple count of surviving firms.
Establishment age and employment scale
The BLS employment-by-age table provides another view of the same broad category. Employment in establishments less than one year old was 673,544 in March 1994. It was 623,147 among one-year-old establishments in March 1995 and 567,786 among two-year-old establishments in March 1996.
The reported employment counts continued as follows:
- Three-year-old establishments: 543,163 in March 1997.
- Four-year-old establishments: 514,327 in March 1998.
- Five-year-old establishments: 485,676 in March 1999.
- Six-year-old establishments: 466,466 in March 2000.
- Seven-year-old establishments: 442,400 in March 2001.
This age sequence should not be treated as a single establishment cohort’s exact headcount path. The BLS table reports employment associated with establishments at each age and date, while the survival table reports the share of an opening cohort still surviving. The measures are related, but they answer different questions: one describes employment scale by establishment age, and the other describes cohort survival.
For bar-management planning, that distinction matters. A survival percentage does not indicate how many employees a surviving operation has, and an employment count does not reveal how many establishments closed. Reading both measures together gives a more careful picture of operating risk and staffing scale without turning a broader hospitality benchmark into a bar-specific forecast.
Gross job gains and losses by age
The BLS also reported job flows as percentages of employment. In March 1995, one-year-old establishments had gross job gains equal to 18.3% of employment and gross job losses equal to 26.0% of employment. The loss measure was higher than the gain measure for that age and month, but these are gross flows, not a reported net rate.
For older establishments, the reported gross job-loss percentages were:
- 21.9% for two-year-old establishments in March 1996.
- 17.9% for three-year-old establishments in March 1997.
- 16.2% for four-year-old establishments in March 1998.
- 15.8% for five-year-old establishments in March 1999.
- 13.6% for six-year-old establishments in March 2000.
- 13.0% for seven-year-old establishments in March 2001.
The sequence is an age-and-date description for Accommodation and Food Services, not a forecast for a new bar. It does show why job churn and establishment survival should be considered separately. An operation may experience substantial hiring and separation activity without closing, while closures remove the establishment and its associated jobs from the operating population.
For readers evaluating a bar concept, the defensible conclusion from these sources is narrow: Census data document a large U.S. drinking-place sector dominated by small employer establishments, while BLS cohort tables show that survival in the broader accommodation and food-services category declines substantially as establishments age. The benchmark is informative for risk planning, but a bar-specific survival rate requires a bar-only longitudinal series that these supplied BLS tables do not provide.
Sources
- Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 for NAICS 722410, “All Sectors: County Business Patterns, including ZIP Code Business Patterns, by Legal Form of Organization and Employment Size Class for the U.S., States, and Selected Geographies: 2023.”
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 7: Survival of private sector establishments by opening year — Accommodation and Food Services.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 1: Private sector gross jobs gains and losses by establishment age — Accommodation and Food Services.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 6: Private sector employment by establishment age — Accommodation and Food Services.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 2: Private sector gross jobs gains and losses, as a percent of employment, by establishment age — Accommodation and Food Services.