“How crowded is my market?” Most owners answer that from the yard signs they pass and the bids they lose. There is a better count, and it is free. The Census Bureau publishes, county by county and trade by trade, how many businesses have a payroll, how many have no employees at all, and how many new businesses are applying for a tax number. One evening with three datasets gives you a number to set beside your gut feeling.
Step 1: find your trade's code
Every one of these datasets sorts businesses by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Each business is filed under one industry code, so start by finding the six-digit code that fits yours. A few, with the titles the Census Bureau uses:
| Trade | NAICS code and Census title |
|---|---|
| Plumbing and HVAC | 238220, Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors |
| Electrical | 238210, Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors |
| Roofing | 238160, Roofing Contractors |
| Painting | 238320, Painting and Wall Covering Contractors |
| Lawn care and landscaping | 561730, Landscaping Services |
| Pest control | 561710, Exterminating and Pest Control Services |
The code is about the business, not the job. A handyman who does some plumbing is probably counted somewhere else, so the count for your code is the shops whose main line is your line.
Step 2: the shops with a payroll (County Business Patterns)
County Business Patterns (CBP) is the Bureau's annual count of “establishments with paid employees.” For each county and six-digit code it gives the number of establishments, employment in the week of March 12, and payroll, plus the number of establishments in each size band (fewer than 5 employees, 5 to 9, 10 to 19 and up). The latest year out is 2023.
Three things to know when you read it:
Step 3: the one-person shops (Nonemployer Statistics)
Nonemployer Statistics (NES) fills the gap. It counts businesses with no paid employees that are subject to federal income tax and have receipts of $1,000 or more, or $1 or more in the construction sector. The Bureau says some are partnerships and corporations but most are sole proprietorships (one-person shops, for short, below), and the count comes mainly from business income tax returns filed with the IRS. It gives the number of businesses and their total receipts by county and industry; the latest year out is 2024.
One catch: most of its geography comes from the business's mailing address, which the Bureau notes may not be where the work happens. Treat a county's figure as close, not exact.
What the national numbers say about your trade
Put the two counts side by side for the same year, 2023, and each trade looks different. The last column divides total nonemployer receipts by the number of nonemployers: an average, mixing part-timers with full-time operators.
| Trade | Employer shops | One-person businesses | Average receipts, one-person |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing, heating and AC | 111,207 | 178,663 | about $78,400 |
| Electrical | 83,342 | 159,693 | about $57,500 |
| Landscaping | 117,969 | 516,572 | about $36,000 |
| Pest control | 16,535 | 16,137 | about $53,700 |
In landscaping there are about 4.4 one-person outfits for every shop with a payroll; in plumbing and HVAC about 1.6; in pest control about one each. That tells you who else is quoting the jobs you quote. The employer shops are mostly small too: of the 111,207 plumbing, heating and air-conditioning establishments, 64,871 had fewer than five employees.
A worked example: one county against the country
A raw count means little until you divide it by the people who might hire you. The Bureau's population estimates give every county's population, so you can work out shops per 10,000 residents and compare with the national rate.
Say a plumbing and HVAC company works in Frederick County, Maryland. The 2023 files show 119 employer establishments there (66 of them under five employees, 1,393 employees in all) and 213 nonemployer businesses. The county's 2023 population estimate is 294,154; the nation's is 336,806,231.
| Trade and count | Frederick County, MD | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing and HVAC, employer shops | 4.0 | 3.3 |
| Plumbing and HVAC, one-person | 7.2 | 5.3 |
| Landscaping, employer shops (138 in the county) | 4.7 | 3.5 |
| Landscaping, one-person (382 in the county) | 13.0 | 15.3 |
By this measure the county is more crowded than average for plumbing and HVAC on both counts. For landscaping it is mixed: more crews with a payroll per head than the nation, fewer solo operators. The same county can be tight for one trade and roomier for another, which is why you run your own code rather than trusting a general “busy area” impression.
Two cautions keep the comparison honest. People are only a stand-in for demand; how many homes are owner-occupied, how old they are and local incomes matter too. And contractors cross county lines, so add the neighboring counties you actually serve and divide by their combined population.
Step 4: who is starting up (Business Formation Statistics)
Business Formation Statistics (BFS) count applications for an Employer Identification Number on IRS Form SS-4. National figures come monthly, from July 2004, and by two-digit sector; county figures come once a year, for all industries together, about six months after the year ends.
For construction (sector 23), the monthly series, not seasonally adjusted, adds up to 382,136 applications in 2019 and 519,090 in 2025, about 36% more. In the example county, applications across all industries went from 2,306 in 2019 to 3,892 in 2025.
Read these as a pressure gauge, not a head count. An application is not a business; the Bureau's own “high-propensity” series picks out the applications most likely to become employers, and applications coded to parts of construction (NAICS 237 and 238) are among the kinds it counts. The county file also has statistical noise added to protect privacy, so read a small county's figures with care.
What the counts cannot tell you
How to pull your own numbers
- Pick your code from the Census NAICS list.
- Open the CBP tables on data.census.gov (they cover 2012 to the latest year), or download the county file from the CBP datasets page, and find your county and code: establishments, employees and the size bands.
- Do the same with the NES county file for the same year: nonemployer count and receipts.
- Take your county's population for that year from the Bureau's population estimates and work out shops per 10,000. Do the national rate once for comparison.
- Check the BFS county file for the trend in new applications.
If spreadsheets are not your thing, the Bureau's Census Business Builder puts selected business and demographic data for a chosen place and business type on one dashboard.
A crowded county is not a reason to quit; it is a reason to know your numbers. When there are more shops chasing the same homes, the owner who knows which jobs actually pay wins. Job Costing: Finding Out Which Jobs Make Money shows how to find them, and What to Pay to Keep Good Crew shows how to check your wages against government data for your trade and area.