Locations

About the figures on our location pages

Where the counts come from

Every business count on our US location pages comes from County Business Patterns 2023, published by the U.S. Census Bureau. It counts establishments with paid employees, so a solo attorney, bookkeeper or adviser with no payroll is not included, and each count is a floor rather than a total.

An establishment is one physical location where business is done. A firm with three offices in a metro counts three times, and a company headquartered elsewhere still counts for each office it runs locally.

Which industries we count

Offices of lawyers (NAICS 541110)
Accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services (NAICS 5412), and within it offices of certified public accountants (541211)
Securities, commodity contracts and like activity (NAICS 523), which holds investment banking, brokerage, portfolio management and investment advice
Corporate, subsidiary and regional managing offices (NAICS 551114)
Offices of real estate agents and brokers (NAICS 531210)

Employee figures

County Business Patterns publishes employment as of mid-March with a small amount of statistical noise added to protect individual businesses. We quote employment only where the Census Bureau flags that noise as low or medium, and we round it with the word "about".

Population and rates

Population figures are the Census Bureau's July 2024 estimates, with the April 2020 estimates base for change over time. Rates per 100,000 residents use the July 2023 estimate, the same year as the business count, and rankings compare only the metro areas that have a page on our site.

What sets a metro apart

The industry comparison on each page sets a metro's mix of establishments against the United States as a whole, using the national County Business Patterns file. A figure of 3.0 times means that industry's share of the metro's establishments is three times its share nationally. We only show industries with enough establishments for the comparison to mean something, and we leave out retail and personal services.

Metros, counties and Puerto Rico

Most pages describe a Census metropolitan statistical area, which can take in several counties and sometimes crosses a state line. Newark and Wilmington pages use county figures because each sits inside a larger metro. County Business Patterns treats each Puerto Rico municipio as a county, so the San Juan page uses San Juan Municipio's own figures.

What these pages don't cover

These pages describe local business activity. They aren't a guide to any state's law. Data breach notification rules are covered state by state on our data breach notification pages, and nothing on a location page should be read as legal advice.