State of the Industry-Gas Stations/C-Stores
Last week, we dove into some of the stats about the automotive industry released by the US Census Bureau from their Annual Business Census in 2023. We at NJGCA track these stats, and it can be interesting and useful to know not just what our place is in the economy today, but how it has changed over the last 25 years that this in-depth data is available. This week we’ll talk about gas stations and convenience stores.
While the total number of gas stations in New Jersey had started to trend upward slightly until the covid-19 outbreak, since then it has been declining and came in at 2,222 in 2023. In 1998 there were 3,085, a 28% decline in 25 years. The most dramatic decline happened in the early 2000s, although given the number of openings of new Wawas and Quickcheks, the drop in independent stations has been higher. The gas station category is subdivided into stations with c-stores and stations without c-stores, most of which have auto repair shops. The number of stations with a c-store has increased in absolute terms by 69% since 1998, and now makes up 47% of total stations. Meanwhile, the number of stations without a c-store has fallen by 52%.
Not all declines in numbers are because a business has closed completely. It could also be that they have changed their structure and were moved into a different category. For example, a gas station with a repair shop that closes its pumps becomes one fewer gas station, but one more auto mechanical repair shop.
The average station with a c-store now has 18 total employees. You can see the impact Wawa has on that stat–a decade ago the average was about 11 per location. Stations without a c-store average just 4.3 employees. The average salary at a location with a c-store is $26,031, a drop from the covid years of 2020-21 but only slightly higher than the average salary going back as far as 1998 when you adjust for inflation. The average salary at stations without a c-store, on the other hand is $38,011 across all employees (attendants and technicians), and that has increased about 33% over the last 5 years, even after adjusting for inflation.
75% of stations without a c-store have just 1-4 employees, and 16% have 5-9 (91% under 10 employees). 40% of stations with a c-store have 1-4 employees, while 20% have 5-9 (60% under 10), 12% have 10-19 total employees, and 15% have more than 50 employees on the books (148 locations). In total, gas stations in NJ employ 23,766 people and contribute $680 million in payroll to the economy.
42% of gas stations are organized as s-corps, 26% are partnerships, 25% are c-corps, and 7% are an individual proprietorship. 41% of all people (9,051) employed by a gas station work at an s-corp with 50+ employees (Wawa is now an s-corp).
While the 10-year trend for the state as a whole has been a roughly 6% decline, there’s been some big outliers in different parts of the state. Sussex, Somerset, Morris, Salem, and Passaic counties have more stations operating in 2023 than in 2014. Meanwhile, the South Jersey counties of Atlantic, Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Cumberland, and Cape May saw the biggest declines, as did Essex, Warren, and Hunterdon counties. One-third of the stations operating in Cape May and Cumberland counties a decade ago have closed.
The entire retail category has seen a 14% decline in the number of operating locations over the last 25 years. In addition to the 1,037 gas stations with c-stores, there are 1,467 standalone c-stores in the state. That number is almost exactly unchanged from 1998, though it represents an increase of 15% over a low point in 2012.
And if you’re wondering whether it might be in your imagination that you’re seeing more ‘smoke shops’ (also tobacco and vape shops) pop up, it’s not an illusion–the number jumped from 194 in 2020 to 374 in 2023, nearly doubling in three years. In 2009, before vaping came along, there were just 80 of these businesses. They employ fewer people than a c-store (just 2.5 on average) but at higher wages ($30k a year vs $25k).
New Jersey’s gas retail market stands out from the rest of the US. Here, 47% of stations have a c-store, compared with 88% of the 109,174 stations across the country. That’s by far the lowest % in the country, the next is Oregon with 69%, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming are around 71%, and our neighbor New York is at 81%.
Only 10 states have seen an increase in the number of stations operating since 2015. New Jersey’s 7% drop in that period is the 11th worst, about the same as our neighbor Pennsylvania. 7 states have seen a double-digit drop, led by Hawaii with a 16% decline. Indiana and California saw the biggest increases. NJ has the 11th biggest population in the country, but we are 19th in total gas stations, likely owing to our relatively small geography.
Nationwide, gas stations provided the economy with $29.7 billion in total payroll and employed just under 1 million people. Two-thirds of stations in the US have under 10 employees.
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