A free lookup of where the small businesses are. Pulled from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages — 2024 annual averages, private-ownership only. Forty industries that small-business buyers and brokers actually look at, with state-by-state firm counts, average pay, and year-over-year growth.
What this is. Source data is BLS QCEW — the most comprehensive public count of U.S. private establishments. Each industry page shows all 50 states + DC + PR with firm count, average employment, average annual pay, location quotient (concentration vs. national), and year-over-year change in firm count.
A note on NAICS codes. Most industries here are 6-digit NAICS 2022. Seven retail and finance codes were reclassified in NAICS 2022 — convenience stores moved from 445120 to 445131; gas stations from 447110 to 457110; florists from 453110 to 459310; investment advice from 523930 to 523940; and so on. Three specialty-trade contractor industries (plumbing/HVAC, electrical, roofing) have no 6-digit data in QCEW 2024 — BLS reports them at the 5-digit aggregation level, which is what's shown here.
What this is not, yet. No margin data — IRS Corporation Source Book detail ended at TY 2013. No county-level granularity in this release (QCEW has it; not yet exposed). No franchise / non-franchise split. The raw JSON is at
/data.json if you want to slice it yourself.
SMB Density · firm counts, employment, and wages by industry × state · data from BLS QCEW 2024 annual (private ownership, state-level; mostly 6-digit NAICS, 3 specialty-trade industries at 5-digit aggregation) · data.json