Home furnishing spans furniture, linens, floor and window coverings, appliances, and the household environment around them. In the United States, employer furniture and home-furnishing stores reported $125.03 billion in 2024 sales, shipments or revenue and employed 395,639 people. The wider picture also includes manufacturing, nonemployer businesses, consumer-price movements, household energy use, and residential safety outcomes.
Contents
- Retail scale and employment
- Manufacturing, e-commerce, inventories and nonemployers
- Recent price movements
- The CPI basket and furnishing categories
- Household energy use
- Residential fires and safety outcomes
Retail scale and employment
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Retail Trade: Summary Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries for Employer Firms in the U.S.: 2024 reports $125,026,353 thousand in 2024 sales, shipments or revenue for furniture and home furnishings stores. That is a reported industry total, not a forecast. The same employer-firm universe recorded $16,820,984 thousand in annual payroll, $4,051,753 thousand in first-quarter payroll, and 395,639 employees.
The total combines two useful categories. Furniture stores reported $68,930,029 thousand in 2024 sales, shipments or revenue, $9,441,051 thousand in annual payroll, $2,326,345 thousand in first-quarter payroll, and 187,705 employees. Home furnishings stores reported $56,096,324 thousand in sales, shipments or revenue, $7,379,933 thousand in annual payroll, $1,725,408 thousand in first-quarter payroll, and 207,934 employees. These are separate rows within the employer-firm retail statistics.
| 2024 U.S. employer-firm category | Sales, shipments or revenue ($1,000) | Annual payroll ($1,000) | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture and home furnishings stores | 125,026,353 | 16,820,984 | 395,639 |
| Furniture stores | 68,930,029 | 9,441,051 | 187,705 |
| Home furnishings stores | 56,096,324 | 7,379,933 | 207,934 |
The payroll figures describe annual and first-quarter payroll, while the employee figures describe the reported 2024 employment count. They should not be treated as average annual headcount or as a measure of household spending. The source’s geography is the United States, and the retail rows cover employer firms.
Manufacturing, e-commerce, inventories and nonemployers
Home furnishing activity extends beyond stores. The Census Bureau’s 2023 All Sectors: Employer and Nonemployer Sales, Value of Shipments, or Revenue for the U.S. recorded $1,789,412 thousand in revenue for nonemployer home-furnishing stores, identified as NAICS 4422. Nonemployer firms have no paid employees. This is a separate statistical universe from the employer-firm retail rows above, so the figure should not be added to the $125,026,353 thousand employer-firm total.
Retail inventory provides another view of the sector’s operating scale. Furniture and home furnishings stores held $17,326,201 thousand in end-of-year inventories in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s Retail Trade: Inventory Valuation Statistics for Employer Firms in the U.S.: 2023. The inventory measure is for the United States and NAICS 442; it is not a sales total and comes from a different year than the 2024 retail sales figures.
Upstream manufacturing was also substantial. The Census Bureau’s Manufacturing: E-Commerce Statistics for the U.S.: 2022 recorded $88,686,569 thousand in 2022 sales, shipments or revenue for furniture and related product manufacturing, NAICS 337. This manufacturing statistic describes U.S. activity in 2022, while the retail and inventory statistics describe later or different industry universes. It therefore supplies context rather than a directly comparable market-size total.
The three measures answer different questions: nonemployer revenue shows activity among businesses without paid employees; end-of-year inventory shows goods held by employer-firm retailers at a point in time; and manufacturing revenue shows the scale of furniture and related product production. Keeping those definitions separate prevents double counting.
Sources: All Sectors: Employer and Nonemployer Sales, Value of Shipments, or Revenue for the U.S.: 2023, Retail Trade: Inventory Valuation Statistics for Employer Firms in the U.S.: 2023, and Manufacturing: E-Commerce Statistics for the U.S.: 2022.
Recent price movements
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported changes in the CPI-U for the U.S. city average over the 12 months ended August 2026. Household furnishings and supplies rose 0.6%. The grouped result masks different movements across products: window and floor coverings and other linens rose 2%, while furniture and bedding fell 0.8%.
Within the coverings and linens group, floor coverings rose 0.9%, window coverings rose 5.4%, and other linens rose 1%. Within furniture and bedding, bedroom furniture fell 0.5%, living-room, kitchen and dining-room furniture fell 0.8%, and other furniture fell 1.9%. Appliances rose 0.1% over the same 12-month period.
| CPI-U U.S. city average category | Change over 12 months ended August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Household furnishings and supplies | +0.6% |
| Window and floor coverings and other linens | +2.0% |
| Floor coverings | +0.9% |
| Window coverings | +5.4% |
| Other linens | +1.0% |
| Furniture and bedding | -0.8% |
| Bedroom furniture | -0.5% |
| Living-room, kitchen and dining-room furniture | -0.8% |
| Other furniture | -1.9% |
| Appliances | +0.1% |
These are 12-month CPI-U changes for the U.S. city average, not quoted transaction prices for a specific retailer, product, room, or quality level. A positive category change indicates an increase in the index over the stated period; a negative change indicates a decrease.
The CPI basket and furnishing categories
Price movement and budget importance are different measurements. In the BLS December 2025 CPI-U relative-importance table for the U.S. city average, furniture and bedding had 0.884% relative importance. Bedroom furniture accounted for 0.305%, and other household equipment and furnishings accounted for 0.566%.
Window and floor coverings and other linens had 0.238% relative importance. Its components were floor coverings at 0.070%, window coverings at 0.046%, and other linens at 0.123%. These percentages describe the relative weight of categories in the CPI-U basket, not the percentage of households that own an item and not a recommended share of a household budget.
| December 2025 CPI-U component | Relative importance |
|---|---|
| Furniture and bedding | 0.884% |
| Bedroom furniture | 0.305% |
| Other household equipment and furnishings | 0.566% |
| Window and floor coverings and other linens | 0.238% |
| Floor coverings | 0.070% |
| Window coverings | 0.046% |
| Other linens | 0.123% |
The measurement date matters. The weights are from December 2025, whereas the price changes in the preceding section cover the 12 months ended August 2026. They should be read together as context, not as one same-period statistic.
Source: Relative importance of components in the Consumer Price Indexes: U.S. city average, December 2025.
Household energy use
The Energy Information Administration’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey measured primary occupied housing units in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It recorded 123.53 million primary occupied homes and estimated 9,481 trillion Btu of total site energy use. The survey excludes vacant, seasonal, second, military, and group-quarter units; its modeled end uses and excluded fuels are documented by EIA.
Space heating accounted for 4,026 trillion Btu, water heating for 1,737 trillion Btu, and air conditioning for 866 trillion Btu. Refrigerators accounted for 352 trillion Btu, while other end uses accounted for 2,501 trillion Btu. These are national totals for the 2020 survey, not measurements for an individual home or furnishing product.
On an average-household basis, the 2020 RECS recorded 76.8 million Btu per household for total site energy consumption, 34.4 million Btu per household for space heating, and 7.9 million Btu per household for air conditioning. The household averages use the survey’s primary occupied housing-unit universe, so they should not be generalized to all structures or all residences.
Source: Table CE3.1 Annual household site end-use consumption in the United States—totals and averages, 2020.
Residential fires and safety outcomes
Home furnishing decisions sit within a broader residential safety environment. The U.S. Fire Administration estimated 344,600 residential-building fires in 2023. Those fires caused an estimated 2,890 deaths, 10,400 injuries, and $11,266,200,000 in property loss in 2023 dollars.
Compared with 2014, residential-building fires decreased 6% by 2023, while residential fire deaths increased 5%. Residential fire injuries decreased 8%, and residential fire dollar loss increased 25% after adjustment to constant 2023 dollars. These are NFIRS-based national estimates, and USFA notes that methodology changes can affect comparability.
The estimated 2023 causes show why the home environment cannot be reduced to one furnishing category. Cooking caused 167,800 residential-building fires, other unintentional or careless actions caused 31,500, heating caused 27,900, and electrical malfunctions caused 23,700. From 2014 to 2023, residential cooking fires decreased 11%; fires attributed to other unintentional or careless actions increased 42%; heating fires decreased 31%; and electrical-malfunction fires increased 2%.
Multiple-fatality residential-building fires averaged an estimated 200 incidents per year from 2021 through 2023 and averaged an estimated 720 deaths per year over that period. These annual averages are also NFIRS-based national estimates, not counts for a single calendar year.
The fire figures measure incidents and outcomes, not the safety performance of a particular bed, sofa, covering, appliance, or household layout. The appropriate interpretation is therefore broad: furnishing and household-environment choices exist alongside cooking, heating, electrical, and other residential risks, while national estimates provide context for the scale and consequences of those risks.
Sources: Residential Fire Estimate Summaries (2014-2023), Residential Building Fire Causes (2014-2023), and Multiple-Fatality Fires in Residential Buildings (2021-2023).