Hair, Nail, and Skin Care Services (U.S.) — Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 81211 — Hair, Nail, and Skin Care Services. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, the standard code U.S. statistical agencies use to group businesses. This is a five-digit industry that rolls up three national industries: barber shops (812111), beauty salons (812112), and nail salons (812113).[1]

This primer synthesizes the three child-industry primers plus our ground-truth federal statistics for this level. It does not re-research the children from scratch — for the deep dive on any one, see its own primer.

1. Overview

This is the "chair" economy: roughly 126,000 storefronts with employees — and hundreds of thousands more one-person operators the federal count never sees — where a licensed person performs an in-person service on a repeat customer. It bundles three trades that look alike from the sidewalk but differ sharply in size, growth, and who owns them.

Three facts define the whole level for an investor:

• It is enormous by count and tiny by ownership. About $38.7 billion in reported (employer) receipts is spread across ~112,500 firms, so the average business is a ~$306,000-a-year shop with about 4.5 employees.[2][3] There is essentially no scaled public company that owns this industry.
• It is one of the most fragmented industries in the U.S. economy. The four largest firms hold 1.7% of receipts; the top 50 hold 4.9%.[3] Value is created one appointment at a time by a licensed practitioner, and neither scale nor technology changes that much.
• Demand is resilient but not recession-proof. Hair grows, nails chip, roots show — a large share of spending is non-deferrable maintenance — but in downturns customers stretch the interval and trade down rather than quit.

For public-market investors: there is no clean way in. The only pure-play listed operators are two micro-caps — a U.S. salon franchisor (Regis) and a Canada-listed nail chain (MiniLuxe) — and the rest of the "exposure" is a bank shot through beauty retailers, product makers, and franchisors of adjacent services (Section 4).

For private investors: this is a private-market industry, and the richer opportunity set lives here — owning or buying a shop, becoming a multi-unit franchisee (a business owner who licenses a brand and system), building or backing a salon-suite landlord platform, or owning the real estate the shops lease (Section 10). The active professional capital sits in the landlord and product layers, not in the service chair itself.

2. What's inside — the three child industries and how they differ

The distinctive thing about this level is the contrast across the children. They share economics (licensed labor, local demand, booth-rental vs. commission pay) but differ in scale, direction, ownership, and how — or whether — you can invest.

Contrast table (shares are of the employer-only federal totals for this level):

How to read the table. Beauty salons are this level — two-thirds of its receipts, establishments, and jobs — so the level's average economics are basically salon economics. Nail salons are the second engine and the fastest-growing. Barber shops are the smallest slice by far, yet paradoxically the most internally concentrated (a modest franchise layer has taken more share of a small pie), and the most self-employed (three in four barbers work for themselves), which means the federal employer statistics undercount barbering worst of all.

A useful contrast: the level's own four-firm concentration (CR4 = 1.7%) sits between beauty (2.6%) and nail (0.4%) because it is a receipts-weighted blend of the two big children — barbering's higher internal concentration barely registers because barbers are only ~4% of the money.[3]

Where 812113/812112/812111 stop and the neighbors begin (so you don't double-count): day spas, waxing, tanning, massage, electrolysis, and permanent makeup are 812199 – Other Personal Care Services, not this level; cosmetology and barber schools are 611511; and the retail of shampoo, polish, clippers, and press-on nails is manufacturing/retail, not a salon service — even when the shop sells it at the till.[1] In practice one storefront often does hair, nails, and waxing under one roof and is classified by its primary line.

3. How big it is (this level's rollup figures)

Read the caveat first: these are employer-only figures and they capture the corporate tip of a much larger, mostly self-employed iceberg. Federal business statistics — County Business Patterns (CBP, the Census annual establishment count) and the Economic Census — count only firms with paid employees on a payroll. This level is dominated by the opposite: booth renters, home studios, mobile operators, and one-person shops.

Core federal figures for NAICS 81211 (from our ground-truth ingested data; note they combine 2023 CBP with 2022 Economic Census concentration data, so they are a consistent picture of the level, not one perfectly synchronized single-year series):

The SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration) size standard for these industries is roughly $9–9.5 million in average annual receipts — a classification line for program eligibility, not a profitability test.[4] Effectively every operator in the level qualifies as a small business.

The undercount — larger here than in most industries. CBP excludes the self-employed, businesses with no employees, and businesses without an employer identification number.[5] Several independent signals show how much sits outside the employer tables:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the federal labor-data agency) counts roughly 575,200 barbers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists (about 37% self-employed) plus 210,100 manicurists and pedicurists (about 28% self-employed) working in 2024 — and in barbering specifically about 76% are self-employed.[7][8] Those solo operators mostly never appear in the 568,140 employer-payroll count.
• Private industry research (IBISWorld) puts the broad U.S. hair-services universe alone — barbering and independent stylists plus employer salons — near ~1 million businesses and ~$60 billion in 2025, with nail salons and their non-employer tail worth several billion more.[6]

So the true footprint of this level is materially larger than the federal employer tables show: on the order of well over a million mostly one-person businesses and plausibly $60–80 billion of activity, of which the federal employer statistics see ~126,000 establishments and $38.7 billion. Treat the $38.7 billion as a floor, not a ceiling — and picture the self-employed operator, not the payrolled firm, when you read "hair, nail, and skin care." (The IBISWorld totals are a private estimate cited to size the gap, not a government count.)

4. The investable universe (where value concentrates across the children)

There is no scaled, liquid, U.S.-listed pure-play for this level. The two direct public operators are both micro-caps, and neither represents the fragmented whole. Below, "~scale" mixes revenue, unit counts, and investment cost as disclosed; brand-reported location counts are not equivalent to federal establishment counts (they may include Canada, broader services, and both company- and franchisee-owned units).

Public companies (direct and adjacent):

Notable private brands, platforms, and owners (representative, not exhaustive):

Where value concentrates. Follow the money and it flows away from the service chair. The most valuable, most investable positions across the three children are (1) franchisors who collect asset-light royalties on system-wide sales (Great Clips, Sport Clips, Regis); (2) salon-suite landlords who convert a volatile labor business into a real-estate-like rent roll (Sola, Phenix — the clearest magnet for private equity); and (3) product and retail companies that sell picks-and-shovels into the category (Ulta, Sally, Helen of Troy). The chair-by-chair operating business — the ~112,500 firms themselves — is where the labor value accrues, not the investor value.

5. How the money works

Across all three children, one choice governs the economics: is the owner a service operator or a landlord?

• Commission / employee model. The shop employs practitioners, controls pricing, scheduling, booking, and the customer relationship, and pays a percentage of each service (splits commonly ~40/60 up to ~70/30 in the worker's favor), keeping the remainder plus retail-product margin.[21][23] More upside as the location grows — but the owner now carries payroll, benefits, scheduling risk, and labor-law exposure, and practitioners describe net margins often in the low-single-digits.[21]
• Booth-/chair-/suite-rental model (the landlord). The practitioner is an independent contractor who pays a fixed weekly rent for a chair (~$100–$400) or a private suite, and keeps their own service revenue.[21][23] The owner converts variable labor into predictable rent, carries almost no payroll, and is effectively a small-scale landlord. The trade-off: upside is capped at the rent. This is the model that attracted institutional capital, because it turns a labor-heavy service into a steadier, real-estate-like income stream.

The scorecard that matters is the same across the children and is not mainly "same-store sales" (most operators are single independents that never report comps): chair/stylist utilization (an empty chair earns nothing but still pays rent), average ticket and service mix (color and acrylic/gel command far higher tickets than a basic cut — the profit engine), rebooking / repeat rate, retail attachment, and rent as a share of sales. Tips are a large part of practitioner take-home across all three and largely bypass the shop, which is why reported wages look low.[8][21]

At the franchisor and landlord level the economics flip to an asset-light stream: royalties, franchise fees, and marketing-fund contributions on system-wide sales, or rent per suite — little store-level cost. One caution for public investors: reported franchisor revenue is not the same as system-wide sales; reconcile the two before comparing scale.[9]

Capital and valuation. Opening an independent shop is cheap (a chair, mirror, tools; a nail buildout often under $250,000), which is exactly why entry is easy and competition relentless. Franchised concepts cost far more up front — roughly $137k to $767k depending on brand.[10][19] Shops change hands as small businesses on a low multiple of seller's discretionary earnings (SDE) — the owner-operator's total economic benefit — so an outside buyer's return depends heavily on retaining the practitioners and their client books.

6. What drives demand

• Biological recurrence. Hair grows, gel and acrylic need a fill every 2–3 weeks, roots show. A large share of demand is non-deferrable maintenance on a short cycle, which makes this level more recession-resilient than most consumer services — but recurrence is not commitment. In downturns customers stretch the interval, trade a full color for a partial, or buy clippers, so revenue softens rather than collapses.[27]
• Grooming and beauty culture. A multi-year men's-grooming resurgence (fades, beards, straight-razor shaves) lifted barber tickets; social-media nail-art culture (TikTok/Instagram) pushes nail customers toward higher-ticket gel, dip, and custom designs; and hair-color and treatment cycles shift the salon mix.[6][22]
• Price and mix. Much recent growth is higher prices and premium services, not more visits — haircut-and-personal-care prices have risen faster than overall inflation for years, letting operators pass through wage and product costs.[27]
• Local density and demographics. Population, foot traffic, and neighborhood mix set the ceiling for any single location; customers value proximity and a trusted practitioner over national brand awareness.
• Labor supply on both sides. The appeal of flexible, self-employed work sustains the booth-rental and suite models; nail salons in particular depend on a large immigrant technician workforce, so immigration policy directly affects capacity.[8][9]
• The DIY substitute. Home color, at-home clipper cuts, and press-on nails are the perennial demand leak in soft economies.[27][22]

As a labor-market clue (not a revenue forecast), BLS projects roughly +4% jobs for barbers, +5% for the broader barber/hairstylist/cosmetologist occupation, and +7% for manicurists/pedicurists from 2024 to 2034 — the same rank order as the size table: barbering steady, salons stable, nails fastest.[7][8] The clearest shared demand shock in living memory was 2020, when personal-care services were ordered shut — a reminder that "non-discretionary" still means "in person."

7. Regulation

Regulation across all three children is primarily state and local, with a few federal overlays. The load falls in the same places:

• Occupational licensing (state). Barbers, cosmetologists, and nail technicians are licensed in every state — training commonly runs ~900–1,800 hours for barbers and ~1,000–2,100 for cosmetologists, plus written and practical exams.[7][26] High hour requirements are a live reform target; several states have cut hours, and the emerging Cosmetology Licensure Compact (roughly ten states by 2026) is beginning to ease multi-state license portability. For an investor, licensing is a structural supply constraint that caps how fast the workforce can grow and props up wages.[26]
• Worker classification (federal + state). The booth-rental / suite model rests on practitioners being independent contractors. Misapplied, that invites reclassification as employees by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), or state agencies using stricter tests (California's "ABC" test is the well-known example). The federal standard is in flux (a 2026 DOL proposal would change the analysis again). This is the single biggest regulatory risk to the dominant landlord business model, carrying back-tax and back-wage exposure.[21][24]
• Health, chemical, and sanitation safety. State boards and local authorities inspect for sanitation, disinfection, and facility standards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) adds bloodborne-pathogen rules where blood exposure is anticipated (nicks during a shave) and hazard-communication / safety-data-sheet requirements for chemicals — most acute in nail salons (the "toxic trio" of toluene, formaldehyde, and dibutyl phthalate) and in hair-smoothing treatments (formaldehyde).[20][23]
• Labor-law enforcement (sharpest in nails). A 2015 New York Times investigation into below-minimum-wage pay in New York nail salons triggered a state task force, a wage bond, and a workers' bill of rights; enforcement continues.[29][30]
• Franchise disclosure (federal). Where a shop is franchised, the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Franchise Rule requires the franchisor to give a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) — 23 standardized items — generally at least 14 days before signing or payment.[25]
• Product regulation (federal). Cosmetics fall under FDA oversight, expanded by the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA); this touches product makers and suppliers more than the salons themselves.[28]

For diligence across any of the children, the core documents are the same: active licenses, inspection history, contractor agreements, payroll and tip records, chemical-safety procedures, and franchise disclosures.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is close to a textbook fragmented level — and, on the standard measures, among the least concentrated in the U.S. economy.[3]

• 4 largest firms: 1.7% of receipts (CR4, the four-firm concentration ratio)
• 8 largest: 2.4% (CR8)
• 20 largest: 3.4% (CR20)
• 50 largest: 4.9% (CR50)
• Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, the standard 0–10,000 concentration score where higher means more concentrated): 1.1 — near the theoretical floor for a competitive market.

Because those figures cover only employer firms and exclude the huge self-employed base, the true market is even more fragmented. And a nationally atomized market can still be locally concentrated around a few strong shops.

Why it stays fragmented — the same forces in all three children:

• Near-zero barriers to entry and minimal scale economies. A second location doesn't make the first cheaper to run.
• Local, personal moats. Loyalty attaches to the individual practitioner, not the brand; the client relationship is portable and walks out the door with the barber, stylist, or technician who holds it. This is why consolidation is hard and why the landlord model — which monetizes the practitioner regardless of brand — is the one that's winning.

Where consolidation is happening, slowly, and it differs by child:

• Franchising is the main vector in hair — professionalizing marketing, real estate, and purchasing (Great Clips, Sport Clips, Floyd's 99, Regis's shift to ~98% franchised).[9][10][11]
• Salon-suite roll-ups are the fastest-growing and most investable model, converting stylist demand into a real-estate rent platform; private equity has concentrated here (Sola is PE-backed).[12]
• Nail salons have barely consolidated at all — branded "clean/luxury" and Walmart-based franchise models remain a low-single-digit share; PE appetite in nails has flowed into products (Olive & June, OPI) rather than the low-margin service.[13][17][20]

The low concentration leaves ample room to roll up locally, but national share gains can mask weak local economics — buyers must underwrite each trade area, lease, roster, and client book separately.

9. Risks

• Key-person / client-book risk. Across all three children, clients follow the practitioner. When a booth renter leaves, their revenue leaves with them — a structural churn problem that undermines any roll-up and a reason not to overpay for a shop whose sales depend on the selling owner's personal clientele.
• Worker-classification and wage-and-hour liability. Reclassifying booth renters/suite tenants as employees would upend the landlord model's economics; nail salons carry the added edge of active wage-theft enforcement.[21][24][29][30]
• Labor supply. Practitioner shortages, licensing frictions, and (in nails) immigration-enforcement sensitivity cap growth and squeeze commission-model margins.[7][8]
• Trade-down and shutdown risk. Downturns stretch intervals and boost DIY; a public-health shutdown closes the doors entirely, as 2020 showed.[27]
• Thin margins and rent inflation. Rent is the biggest fixed cost; lease renewals can erase a shop's profit, and suite landlords hold fixed lease obligations against empty rooms in a downturn.
• No scalability / no network effects. Running 50 shops is not meaningfully cheaper per shop than one, which caps outside-investor returns.
• Chemical, sanitation, and reputation risk. Product liability, infections, formaldehyde exposure, or a wave of poor online reviews can sink a single location fast — sharpest in nail and chemical-heavy hair services.[23][28]
• Micro-cap / illiquidity risk (public route). Both listed pure-plays (Regis, MiniLuxe) are small, thinly traded turnarounds carrying execution and balance-sheet risk far beyond the underlying industry.[9][13]
• Data caveat. Federal employer-only figures make market-size and concentration analysis look more precise than the true, largely non-employer, industry actually is — the gap is widest in barbering.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes (thin). There is no clean instrument for this level. The two direct pure-plays are speculative micro-caps: Regis (Nasdaq: RGS), a salon franchise-royalty turnaround, and MiniLuxe (TSXV: MNLX / OTC: MNLXF), a branded nail chain still building scale at a loss.[9][13] Everything else is adjacent — a beauty retailer (Ulta), a franchisor of a neighboring service (European Wax Center), a products distributor (Sally Beauty), or product owners (Helen of Troy, Coty, L'Oréal). Treat salon exposure inside any of these as segment exposure, not a pure industry investment. There is no ETF or index for the level — it is too small and fragmented to have one. If your thesis is "hair, nail, and skin care services" specifically, the honest conclusion is that the public market does not offer it.

Private routes (the real ones):

• Own or buy a shop on a low SDE multiple — but you are buying practitioners and their client books, so retention terms matter more than the fixtures. Verify tax returns, bank deposits, merchant-processing records, payroll, booth-rental agreements, lease terms, licensing, and normalized owner compensation.
• Become a multi-unit franchisee (Great Clips, Sport Clips, Floyd's 99, Regal Nails, a salon-suite brand) — the most repeatable way to deploy capital, roughly $137k–$767k per unit. Read the FDD closely and call current and former franchisees before committing.[10][19]
• Own or back a salon-suite landlord — the real-estate-style model that draws private equity; steadier cash flow, landlord-like risk, and it sidesteps the worst of the classification exposure.[12]
• Be the landlord of the real estate itself, or back the enablers — the booking/payments/marketing software (largely private) every shop now needs.

Before committing privately, request location-level monthly sales, service mix, rebooking data, practitioner tenure and classification, lease terms, licensing records, inventory, and owner add-backs. The central diligence question is the same for all three children: does the cash flow survive the departure of the owner or a top practitioner?

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). The base case is a large, stable, hyper-fragmented level growing at low-to-mid single digits, with the three children keeping their rank: beauty salons the stable core, nail salons the fastest-growing, barber shops the steady niche. Demand is underpinned by biological recurrence, a durable grooming/beauty culture, and steady price increases — but the economics stay thin, and the most attractive returns accrue to franchisors and suite landlords, not to chair-by-chair operators. The swing factors to watch across the whole level are labor supply (enough trained practitioners), worker classification (whether regulators tighten the booth-rental/suite model), and consumer trade-down in a recession (which historically dents rather than devastates this industry). For most investors the takeaway is blunt: this is a good small business and a poor public-market security — the returns live with the person in the chair.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS 2022: 81211 Hair, Nail, and Skin Care Services (and child codes 812111/812112/812113 — definitions and adjacent-code exclusions). https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=81211&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2023 (NAICS 81211 — establishments, paid employees, annual and Q1 payroll; via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Establishment and Firm Size / Concentration (NAICS 81211) (firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI; via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
4. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 812111/812112 = $9.5M; 812113 = $9.0M), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns methodology / Nonemployer Statistics (employer-only coverage; self-employed and no-payroll businesses excluded). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. IBISWorld, Hair Salons / Barber Shops in the US — Market Size, Number of Businesses, 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/hair-salons/4410/
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Barbers, Hairstylists, and Cosmetologists (~575,200 employed; ~37% self-employed, ~76% for barbers; 2024–2034 projections; licensing). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/barbers-hairstylists-and-cosmetologists.htm
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Manicurists and Pedicurists (~210,100 employed; ~28% self-employed; $16.66 median hourly, May 2024; +7% 2024–2034). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/manicurists-and-pedicurists.htm
9. Regis Corporation, Form 10-K (FY ended June 30, 2025) and Form 10-Q (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2025) (SEC) with StockAnalysis.com for market cap/revenue (salon count, franchise model, brands). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000716643&type=10-K
10. Great Clips, About Us / Franchise FAQ, 2026 (salon and franchisee counts, investment). https://www.greatclips.com/about-us/overview
11. Sport Clips, Company Fast Facts / FAQ, 2025–2026 (store count, men's focus). https://sportclips.com/about-us/faq
12. Sola Salon Studios (Radiance Holdings) / 1851 Franchise, Salon-suite category overview (Sola, Phenix, MY SALON Suite); private-equity backing. 2025–2026. https://www.solafranchising.com/about-us/our-story/
13. MiniLuxe Holding Corp., Full-Year Financial Results (years ended Dec. 2024 and Dec. 2025), GlobeNewswire, with StockAnalysis.com for market value. https://stockanalysis.com/quote/otc/MNLXF/
14. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Ulta Beauty, Inc. — Form 10-K (~1,400 stores; in-store salons). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001403568&type=10-K
15. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, European Wax Center, Inc. — Form 10-K (~1,000 franchised centers; 2021 IPO). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001856236&type=10-K
16. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SBH) — Form 10-K (professional salon-products distributor). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001368458&type=10-K
17. Helen of Troy / Retail Dive, Helen of Troy Completes Acquisition of Olive & June (~$240M); Coty/Sally Hansen and Wella/OPI context. 2024. https://www.retaildive.com/news/olive-and-june-acquired-helen-of-troy-hydro-flask-oxo/733740/
18. Hair Cuttery Family of Brands, Company overview / franchise information (Hair Cuttery, Bubbles, cibu; largest privately owned full-service chain). 2026. https://realestate.haircuttery.com/
19. Floyd's 99 Barbershop / V's Barbershop / Franchise Chatter, Barbershop franchise guides (shop counts; single-unit investment estimates $137k–$767k). 2025–2026. https://franchise.floydsbarbershop.com/price-tag/
20. Regal Nails, The Franchise (location count; Walmart footprint). https://regalnails.com/franchise/
21. Thriving Stylist / SQUIRE / GlossGenius, Booth rental vs. commission economics (splits, margins, contractor model). 2024–2026. https://thrivingstylist.com/blog/commission-vs-booth-rental-where-is-the-money-really-at/
22. MaximizeMarketResearch, Nail Salon Market (service pricing, trend drivers), 2025. https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/market-report/nail-salon-market/195476/
23. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Hair Salons (formaldehyde/hazard communication) and Health Hazards in Nail Salons (toxic trio; SDS; ventilation). https://www.osha.gov/nail-salons/chemical-hazards
24. U.S. Department of Labor, Employee or Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act — rulemaking, 2026; and IRS Publication 4902. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa/misclassification/rulemaking
25. Federal Trade Commission, Franchise Rule (Franchise Disclosure Document; 23 items; 14-day rule). https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/franchise-rule
26. BeautyLicenseGuide, Barber and Cosmetology license requirements by state (~900–2,100 hours); Cosmetology Licensure Compact (~10 states by 2026). 2024–2026. https://beautylicenseguide.com/cosmetology-license/
27. CNN Business, "Why the Fed cares about the cost of your haircut" (haircut inflation, services CPI, downturn trade-down). 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/economy/stocks-week-ahead-fed-services-inflation-haircut-doctors-visit/index.html
28. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA). https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/modernization-cosmetics-regulation-act-2022-mocra
29. Economic Policy Institute, The Policy Failures Exposed by the New York Times' Nail Salon Investigation, 2015. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-policy-failures-exposed-by-the-new-york-times-nail-salon-investigation/
30. New York State Attorney General, Attorney General James Recovers $300,000 in Unpaid Wages for New York City Nail Salon Workers, 2023. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2023/attorney-general-james-recovers-300000-unpaid-wages-new-york-city-nail-salon

Note: the child-industry concentration figures cited in Section 2 marked "[relative]" (barber CR4 10.2% / HHI 39.2; beauty 2.6% / ~2.4; nail 0.4% / ~0.1) are drawn from the three child primers' Economic Census 2022 concentration tables and are shown only to contrast the children against the level total in source [3].