Repair Means Business: Why Right to Repair Keeps Tech Affordable

Why are independent repair shops important to local economies?

Independent repair shops matter to local economies because they are employers, tenants, and service providers. They pay wages and rent, train technicians, and keep the devices that households and neighboring businesses rely on working.

Start with what happens at the counter. Someone walks in with a phone that will not charge or a laptop that will not boot. A technician diagnoses it, fixes it, and hands it back. The customer keeps a device they already own, and the shop gets paid for skilled work. That exchange happens in communities across the country every day, and it is hard to find in the way local economies are usually measured.

Three questions come up whenever an owner tries to explain the shop’s value to a council member, a lender, or a legislator. Here is what the evidence supports for each.

How do independent tech repair businesses create jobs?

Independent repair shops create jobs the way other service businesses do: by selling skilled labor. A shop needs bench technicians who diagnose and repair, and people at the counter who handle intake and customers. Larger shops add board-level specialists, refurbishment staff, and managers. Many technicians learn the trade at the bench, which makes a shop a training ground as well as an employer.

How many of these jobs exist nationally is harder to answer. Nobody knows precisely, and that is the problem.

The U.S. Census Bureau tracks electronic and precision equipment repair under NAICS 811210, but that classification includes specialized equipment repair businesses while excluding some technology repair shops classified under retail, wireless, and computer services. As a result, federal industry figures alone cannot tell us how many independent technology repair shops operate in America. The TCA is working to develop a clearer picture of the industry’s economic footprint.

In practice, the same code covers the repair of medical equipment, scientific instruments, radar, office machines, and broadcast gear. It is too broad and too narrow at the same time, for reasons covered in the next section.

The TCA will not publish a national jobs number built on guesses. Counting the industry properly is one of the things this campaign exists to do.

What can be said with confidence is where repair shops sit. The SBA Office of Advocacy reported in February 2026 that the United States has 36.2 million small businesses, employing 45.9 percent of private-sector workers. Those are economy-wide figures, not repair figures. Independent repair shops belong to that economy and deserve to be counted inside it.

Where does a repair shop’s revenue go?

A tech repair shop is a service business. A repair ticket has two parts: the component and the work. The component usually comes from a national or international supplier. The work is done by a technician the shop employs, in a space the shop rents or owns.

Part 3 of the TCA’s Fix the Shop First series, How to Calculate Your Tech Repair Shop Labor Rate, works through an illustrative one-technician shop. The numbers are an example, not a benchmark. In that example, the shop needs about $15,750 a month in labor revenue after parts are paid for. Here is where it goes:

In this example, technician pay and the fixed costs of the storefront, which include rent and counter payroll, account for four of every five labor dollars. How much of that stays in the community depends on the shop. Parts, software, and insurance usually come from elsewhere, and nobody has measured the local share for this industry.

You will see claims that a fixed percentage of every dollar spent at a local business stays local. Nobody has measured that for tech repair, so the TCA does not use one. The case does not need it. A shop’s payroll and lease are real and easy to document.

What do repair shops contribute beyond jobs and revenue?

• Devices that keep working. A repaired phone or laptop is one a household, a student, or an employer does not have to replace. The shop’s own mix of services decides how much of that it can deliver, which is the subject of Part 6 of Fix the Shop First.
• Support for other local businesses. Shops repair the point-of-sale tablets, office laptops, and phones that neighboring businesses run on.
• A competitive choice. Where the only options are a manufacturer’s service channel or a new device, customers have little room to compare price and turnaround. An independent shop is a third option.
• Local accountability. The customer hands the device to a business they can walk back into, with a named person responsible for the work. That is accountability, not a guarantee, and each shop earns it through its own data-handling practices.
• Technicians trained on the job. A shop that hires and trains is building a local technical workforce.
• A front door for reuse and recycling. Devices a shop cannot fix still need somewhere responsible to go. The TCA covered that in What Happens to the Devices Your Tech Repair Shop Turns Away?

Waste reduction matters. It is one benefit among several, and it is not the main reason these businesses matter.

Why is tech repair invisible in the official numbers?

Tech repair is hard to see in official statistics for three reasons. Shops are spread across several industry codes. The main federal count covers only employers. And the programs built on that data inherit the gap.

1. The industry is scattered across classification codes. Federal statistics sort a business by its primary activity, not by everything it does. There is no code for independent phone and computer repair. A shop lands in one of several, depending on where most of its revenue comes from.

   If most of the shop’s revenue comes from	It is counted under	2022 NAICS code
   Repairing devices	Electronic and Precision Equipment Repair and Maintenance, alongside medical, scientific, and office equipment repair	811210
   Selling new devices or accessories, with repair on the side	Electronics and Appliance Retailers	449210
   Selling wireless plans and activations, with repair on the side	Agents for Wireless Telecommunications Services	517122
   Buying, refurbishing, and reselling used devices	Used Merchandise Retailers	459510
   Supporting business computers and networks	Other Computer Related Services	541519

   The first three rows follow the Census Bureau’s own definitions and cross-references for NAICS 811210. The last two are codes where the TCA expects to find repair-active businesses and will test in its own research.

   None of these shops is misclassified. A storefront that fixes phones all day but earns most of its revenue from prepaid activations is correctly coded as a wireless agent. The effect is the same either way: no single federal number describes tech repair, and anyone who looks up the repair code sees a fraction of the businesses doing the work.

2. The main count only sees employers. County Business Patterns covers establishments with paid employees. An owner who does the repairs alone, a mobile technician, or a mail-in operation run from a workshop may not appear in it at all.

3. Repair is easy to overlook in the programs built on those numbers. When an economic-development office, a lender, or a legislative committee looks for local industries to support or consult, it starts from the data. A sector that does not show up cleanly in the data is easy to leave out of the meeting. The TCA described the same gap from the shop’s side in The Data Gap Costing Tech Repair Shops $50,000+ Per Year.

How big is the U.S. tech repair industry?

Nobody knows precisely. No federal dataset isolates independent tech repair, and private estimates, including the TCA’s, are preliminary.

The TCA’s own working estimate, from the State of Tech Repair 2026 analysis it published in February, puts the wider U.S. tech repair economy at $38 billion to $51 billion a year. That number is preliminary. It spans every device category and every channel, including do-it-yourself parts and tools and manufacturer-authorized service. It is broader than the repair-service revenue of independent shops, and it is not a federal figure or a verified market total. The TCA is still refining the method behind it.

One outside data point shows the scale of demand. Allstate Protection Plans estimated that Americans spent $8.3 billion on smartphone screen repairs alone in 2023. That is a survey-based estimate covering every kind of provider, not only independent shops. It is also one repair on one type of device.

Put those together and you have the campaign’s starting point. People spend billions of dollars a year keeping their devices working. Independent shops in every community do that work. No public dataset can tell you how much of it is theirs. An industry that cannot be measured is easy to leave out.

How does Right to Repair affect small businesses?

Right to Repair affects small businesses by deciding whether an independent shop can get what it needs to complete a repair. The term covers laws and policies that require manufacturers to make parts, tools, documentation, and software available to device owners and independent repair businesses on fair terms.

A repair shop can only sell a repair it is able to finish. Finishing it takes four things: the part, the tool, the documentation, and software that lets the device accept the repair. When a manufacturer limits any of them to its own service network, the customer loses a choice and a local business loses the job.

The Federal Trade Commission has documented the pattern. Its 2021 policy statement on repair restrictions lists what the agency found: parts, manuals, diagnostic software, and tools limited to authorized networks, software locks, and physical design choices that make independent repair harder. The same statement says more repair choice can lower costs, extend product life, speed up repairs, and create economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and local businesses.

That is why the TCA treats Right to Repair as small-business policy. The question in front of a legislature is not only whether an owner may fix their own phone. It is whether a qualified shop in the district is allowed to compete for the work. Every repair a shop has to turn away is revenue that does not stay with a local business.

Do repair restrictions affect competition and consumer costs?

Yes, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Its policy statement finds that restricting repair choice “can substantially increase the total cost of repairs” and lengthen wait times, and that more choice can lower costs.

The mechanism is competition. When an independent shop can get the part, the tool, and the software, it can quote the job, and the customer has more than one price to compare. When it cannot, the customer has fewer qualified providers to choose from, and for some repairs the choice narrows to an authorized channel or a replacement.

That is the sense in which Right to Repair keeps tech affordable. It does not set prices. It keeps qualified independent businesses in the market, and a market with more qualified competitors gives customers more options on price and turnaround.

Cost already decides many repairs. In Allstate Protection Plans’ 2023 surveys, 49 percent of respondents said they would not repair a damaged phone that still works because of the cost. Shop owners hear the same thing at the counter.

The TCA does not publish a repair-versus-replacement savings figure, because no reliable one exists for the industry. The argument rests on competition, not on a number.

Where the laws stand is covered in last week’s update, Right to Repair in 2026: What Changed for Your Tech Repair Shop Since March. The TCA’s ongoing policy work is on its Right to Repair advocacy page.

What is Repair Means Business?

Repair Means Business is the TCA’s campaign to get independent tech repair counted, heard, and consulted as the local business sector it is. It is open to every independent shop, whether or not the shop is a TCA member, and it does three things.

What the campaign asks of shops

Be documented and be heard. Record what your shop contributes, tell your legislators what stands in your way, and add your story to the industry’s case.

Why should state legislators consult independent repair businesses?

State legislators should consult independent repair businesses because bills about devices, parts, software, and warranties change what those businesses are able to sell. Their owners are constituents with payrolls and leases in the district. Manufacturers are represented in those conversations year-round, and repair shops rarely are. The campaign asks three things of policymakers and local officials.

• Count repair. Include independent tech repair when you measure and support local small business.
• Consult repair. When a bill touches devices, parts, software, or warranties, hear from the shop owners in your district before you vote.
• Protect the ability to compete. A local shop can only finish the repair if it can get the part, the tool, the documentation, and the software. Right to Repair is small-business policy. It decides whether a qualified local business is allowed to do the work its customers are asking for.

The campaign makes the same ask of every legislator in every party. It does not endorse candidates and never will.

The timeline

Three ways to join this week

Each of these is something a shop owner or technician can start today.

Also this month: Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday is November 28. Most repair shops let it pass because it is framed around retail. It is a day when your whole community is thinking about local business, and a repair shop is one. Next Wednesday’s article is the full Small Business Saturday playbook for tech repair shops.

Quick summary

Independent tech repair shops are local small businesses that employ skilled people, pay rent and wages, and keep a community’s devices working. Right to Repair decides whether those shops can get the parts, tools, documentation, and software they need to compete, and that competition is what keeps repair affordable. Nobody has an accurate count of the industry, because federal statistics spread repair shops across several classification codes and private estimates are still preliminary. Repair Means Business is the TCA’s campaign to count the industry, tell its story, and bring shop owners into policy conversations before the 2027 sessions. This week: document what your shop contributes, connect with your legislators, and add your story to the industry’s case.

About the author

Rob Link is the founder and CEO of the Tech Care Association, a nonprofit trade association for independent tech repair professionals. He has spent more than a decade in wireless retail and device repair, including roles at Wigo Wireless, Fixt, and Upsie, where he was VP of Repair Operations. He previously served on the board of the Repair Association, has testified before state legislatures on right to repair, and frames his work around People, Planet, Country. Over the past year he has also led eWaste Warriors, collecting electronics and putting them back to use across the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region. Washingtonian Magazine named him one of its 2026 Tech Titans.

Next Wednesday: the Small Business Saturday playbook for tech repair shops.