The collision repair industry employed 245,727 people nationally in December 2025, a decline of 8,946 jobs (or 3.5%) from December 2024, according to data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program. Average weekly wages in collision repair rose to $1,392 in the fourth quarter of 2025, an increase of $43, or 3.2%, from the same period a year earlier, the data shows.
The figures reflect private-sector establishments nationally and cover NAICS code 811121, Automotive Body, Paint, and Interior Repair and Maintenance, a classification developed under the Office of Management and Budget and hosted for public reference on the U.S. Census Bureau's NAICS site.
Monthly employment declined throughout the fourth quarter
Monthly collision repair employment figures for the quarter, drawn from the same QCEW data, show a consistent year-over-year decline:
- October 2025 employment totaled 246,244, down 8,565, or 3.4%, from October 2024.
- November 2025 employment totaled 245,115, down 9,879, or 3.9%, from November 2024.
- December 2025 employment totaled 245,727, down 8,946, or 3.5%, from December 2024.
Shop counts rose slightly while total wages paid fell
The number of collision repair establishments nationally reached 35,487 in the fourth quarter of 2025, an increase of 98, or 0.3%, from the fourth quarter of 2024, the data indicate.
Total quarterly wages paid across the industry nationally reached $4.45 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, a decrease of $20.5 million, or 0.5%, from the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the same QCEW data.
Broader workforce and wage trends in collision repair
The employment decline follows a broader pattern of workforce trends reported across the collision repair industry over the past year, including a drop in body technician job openings. Wage pressure in the industry has also been a recurring theme.
The collision repair employment and wages trends also align with broader industry data reported for 2025, including declines in repairable claims volume alongside rising total loss frequency.
Separate data tracked monthly by Autobody News and National Autobody Research (NABR) shows posted labor rates climbing across all four core repair categories in June 2026, though at uneven rates: mechanical rates rose 11.6% year over year to $163 an hour, nearly double the pace of body rates, which rose 6.2% to $86, and refinish rates, which rose 4.9% to $85. Frame rates rose 6.4% to $117.
That NABR data measures shop-posted hourly labor rates rather than the average weekly wages reported in the BLS figures above, so the two data sets are not directly comparable, but both point to rising labor costs across the industry even as overall employment contracts.
How the BLS collects and reports this data
The collision repair employment and wages figures come from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program, which BLS describes as a quarterly census, not a survey, covering more than 95% of U.S. jobs and compiled from state unemployment insurance tax records. The specific figures cited here were drawn from the program'sopen data access files for the fourth quarter of 2025, filtered to the national, private-ownership total for NAICS 811121.
