Industry Jobs & Pay
Why It Matters
Most of the businesses a searcher buys run on people, so the labor market is a deal input before any single deal. Three numbers frame a trade: how many it employs nationally, which is its scale as an employer; whether that headcount is rising or falling, which signals demand and, when it climbs, how hard the next hire will be; and what the work pays, usually the largest cost line and the figure a new owner has to match to keep the team. The figures below are for June 2026.
Largest Employer
12.3M
Food services & drinking places, national jobs.
Hiring Fastest
+4.2%
Death care services, year over year.
Best Paid
$1,760/wk
Offices of physicians, average weekly pay.
By Industry
Sorted by employment. Sort by the year-over-year column to see where hiring is tightening, and by weekly pay to compare labor cost across trades. Each figure is a detailed industry, not a broad sector, so the rows do not overlap.
| Food services & drinking placesLeisure & hospitality | 12.35M | +1.0% | $548 |
| Specialty trade contractorsConstruction | 5.26M | +0.6% | $1,549 |
| Nursing & residential care facilitiesHealth care & social assistance | 3.49M | +2.2% | $900 |
| Offices of physiciansHealth care & social assistance | 3.05M | +1.8% | $1,760 |
| Truck transportationTransportation & warehousing | 1.47M | -1.1% | $1,365 |
| Building material & garden supply storesRetail trade | 1.35M | -1.9% | $721 |
| Child day care servicesHealth care & social assistance | 1.10M | +0.6% | $687 |
| Janitorial servicesProfessional & business services | 1.08M | +1.0% | $647 |
| Offices of dentistsHealth care & social assistance | 1.06M | +1.5% | $1,183 |
| Automotive repair & maintenanceOther services | 1.03M | -0.9% | $1,102 |
| Landscaping servicesProfessional & business services | 917K | +0.4% | $1,129 |
| Fitness & recreational sports centersLeisure & hospitality | 692K | +1.4% | $465 |
| Automotive parts & tire storesRetail trade | 605K | +1.0% | $998 |
| Veterinary servicesProfessional & business services | 483K | +2.0% | $1,109 |
| Drycleaning & laundry servicesOther services | 258K | -1.1% | $814 |
| Death care servicesOther services | 140K | +4.2% | $889 |
Guides for These Trades
The labor figures above feed straight into a specific trade. These guides carry the rest: what the business is worth, what to verify, and how to finance it.
- Buying an HVAC Business
- Buying a Plumbing Business
- Buying an Electrical Contracting Business
- Buying a Roofing Company
- Buying a Restaurant
- Buying a Home Care Agency
- Buying a Landscaping Business
- Buying a Pool Service Business
- Buying a Commercial Cleaning Business
- Buying a Moving Company
- Buying a Childcare Center
- Buying a Dental Practice
- Buying an Auto Repair Shop
- Buying an Auto Body Shop
- Buying a Gym or Fitness Studio
- Buying a Tire Shop
- Buying a Veterinary Practice
- Buying a Laundromat
- Buying a Funeral Home
How to Read It
Read employment as scale and its trend as pressure: a trade adding jobs is one where demand is holding and staffing is competitive, so wage costs and turnover deserve a hard look in diligence; one shedding jobs may be easier to staff but is worth a second look at why. Weekly pay is the average across every role in the industry, not the wage for one job, so use it to compare trades rather than to budget a single hire. For a second angle on the same cost, the Industry Economics page carries payroll per employee from Census (total payroll over headcount, which runs lower because it folds in part-time and excludes what an owner draws). For how many of these businesses exist and how often they change hands, the Where the Businesses Are and Business Formation pages join headcount to counts and trends.
Method & Source
Employment, year-over-year change, and average weekly earnings come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics national series, seasonally adjusted, for June 2026. Employment counts all employees on nonfarm payrolls in the industry; weekly earnings are for all employees. Industries are the detailed CES industries a searcher most often hunts in; broad sector totals are left off so the rows do not double-count. The same figures are open JSON at /api/data/industry-jobs.