Where the Businesses Are
Pick an Industry
A searcher who has chosen an industry still has to choose a state, and that decision is usually made on a feeling about where business is good. It can be made on a count instead. These are the businesses with five to ninety-nine employees: big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. By state to compare markets, and by county because nobody actually searches California. They search Phoenix, and Los Angeles County alone holds more plumbing and HVAC companies than most states do.
196,617 businesses with 5 to 99 employees across the country. What they trade for.
| California | 25,948 | 13.2% | 34,075 |
| Texas | 19,199 | 9.8% | 23,740 |
| Florida | 11,238 | 5.7% | 15,395 |
| New York | 9,320 | 4.7% | 17,879 |
| Ohio | 8,234 | 4.2% | 10,311 |
| Illinois | 7,515 | 3.8% | 10,604 |
| Georgia | 7,097 | 3.6% | 9,479 |
| North Carolina | 6,716 | 3.4% | 8,376 |
| Pennsylvania | 6,059 | 3.1% | 9,703 |
| Michigan | 5,840 | 3.0% | 7,738 |
| Virginia | 5,336 | 2.7% | 7,056 |
| Tennessee | 4,650 | 2.4% | 5,665 |
| Arizona | 4,369 | 2.2% | 5,437 |
| Indiana | 4,253 | 2.2% | 5,278 |
| New Jersey | 4,068 | 2.1% | 7,581 |
| Washington | 3,869 | 2.0% | 5,124 |
| Colorado | 3,728 | 1.9% | 4,560 |
| Missouri | 3,693 | 1.9% | 4,600 |
| Maryland | 3,657 | 1.9% | 5,466 |
| Massachusetts | 3,470 | 1.8% | 5,271 |
| Alabama | 3,386 | 1.7% | 4,305 |
| South Carolina | 3,204 | 1.6% | 4,118 |
| Wisconsin | 3,086 | 1.6% | 3,920 |
| Minnesota | 3,027 | 1.5% | 3,881 |
| Louisiana | 2,881 | 1.5% | 3,734 |
Why Counts and Not Feelings
A market with three times the targets is a market where three times as many owners will retire, get sick, get bored, or get an offer. It does not make the deals better and it does not make them cheaper. It makes them EXIST, which is the constraint that ends most searches: not a bad deal taken, but no deal found.
The counts are complete. Unlike the loan file, which keeps only each state's busiest industries, Census counts every establishment in every state, so a thin number here is a thin market rather than a gap in the data. What it cannot tell you is how many are for sale, because nobody counts that.
Census County Business Patterns (2022). How often each industry changes hands is in Market Depth, and what actually sells in each state is in What Sells Where.