Engineering service establishments across the states

Our data

We selected 51 state-level rows for engineering services, calculated each state's share of 63,233 establishments, and derived local employment-size comparisons. The CSV and JSON expose the same counts, source codes and missing-value status. These are computed public-data aggregates at the industry and state level.

Download the 51-row CSV · JSON dataset · Source checksums · Methodology

Source: Census Bureau 2023 County Business Patterns state bulk file. Industry filter: NAICS 541330; all legal forms; 50 states and District of Columbia. The five leading states sum to 24,791 establishments, or 39.21% of this geographic total.

The top five states leave most establishments elsewhere

California contributes 8,898 establishments, Texas 5,772, Florida 5,260, New York 2,486 and Colorado 2,375. Together they contain 24,791 of the 63,233 establishments. The remaining 38,442 are spread across the other states and the District of Columbia. A plan focused only on the five largest states would therefore omit most of this measured population.

Allocate sales investment using the commercial requirements of the program. A service specialization, delivery area or account-size requirement may justify a narrower market. The table makes the geographic tradeoff visible so it can be an explicit planning choice rather than an accidental consequence of where an existing CRM happens to contain records.

Industry classification and professional licensing use different units

The filter uses NAICS 541330, engineering services. It identifies the activity category of establishments in the Census file. Counting individual engineers, checking professional licenses and identifying engineering staff in other industries each require a separate source.

For a product sold to engineering service firms, this can be a useful starting boundary. For a product sold to anyone with an engineering role, it would miss other industries by design. Define the buyer population before using the total as a market denominator. A role-based contact population and an industry-based establishment population should remain separate analyses.

Employment-size bands reveal a mixed office population

The under-five band contains 53.08% of engineering service establishments. The three bands below 20 employees together contain 51,304 establishments, with numeric inputs available for all 51 jurisdictions. The remaining establishments are in larger local size bands; their parent-company relationships require a separate account view.

California has 7,519 under-20 establishments out of 8,898, or 84.50%. Texas has 4,607 of 5,772, or 79.82%. Florida has 4,420 of 5,260, or 84.03%. A model that assumes the same local office size everywhere would miss this variation. A model that treats local size as parent-company headcount would introduce another, different error.

Specialization remains outside this dataset

Classifying establishments by discipline, project type or customer sector requires business-level evidence. The same applies to technical capability, procurement requirements and project pipelines. Those fields need current business-level research.

That limit matters when a market-sizing spreadsheet turns a broad count into a revenue forecast. Applying one contract value to every establishment would require assumptions about service fit, account consolidation and purchasing frequency that are absent here. Keep those assumptions in a labelled scenario model rather than presenting the resulting revenue as a Census finding.

Turn a state discrepancy into a review question

Compare your verified engineering-service locations with the same state grouping and inspect large differences. A small internal share in Colorado, for example, might deserve attention because Colorado is fifth in this extract. It could also be consistent with a product that deliberately serves another engineering specialty or region.

Review current official company pages for a defined sample, preserve the evidence date and connect each location to its verified parent account where possible. Keep unresolved classifications visible. Build an explainable account model that records how its commercial population relates to the historical government distribution.

All state counts and derived shares

The table is ordered by total establishments. Shares use the full 51-jurisdiction denominator. Employment-size columns count establishments within each local size band. Use the horizontal scroll area on a narrow screen; the CSV is available above for filtering and analysis.

Method, missing values and reproducibility

1. Selection. Select the 2023 CBP state bulk file, retain LFO '-' (all legal forms), the exact industry code and the 50 states plus District of Columbia. Do not add legal-form subgroups or industry children to their totals. Join state labels using Census FIPS codes preserved as two-character strings.
2. Share calculation. Sum EST across the 51 rows. Divide each row's EST by that sum and multiply by 100 for geographic share. Sort by EST descending, then FIPS ascending to give ties a stable display order.
3. Employment-size rule. For the under-20 count, add N<5, N5_9 and N10_19 only when all three are numeric. Otherwise retain a null result and the source N marker. Divide a known under-20 count by the same row's EST for its percentage. Round displayed percentages to two decimals; retain integer counts for reconciliation.

The Census state record layout for 2020–2023 defines the fields and the N marker for unavailable or non-comparable size-class counts. We preserve those markers rather than replacing them with zero. The official state FIPS reference supplies the geography labels.

The observation year is 2023; the report was prepared in 2026. The unit is an employer establishment in the chosen industry, not a unique company or contact. Nonemployer businesses are outside this extract's population. Employment-size categories describe local establishments rather than corporate parents. Geographic shares use only the 50 states and DC, excluding territories. A blank derived size value means unavailable, not zero. These descriptive aggregates do not establish current operating status, parent ownership, buying authority, revenue, purchasing intent or contact-list completeness. It cannot count or license individual engineers, classify every engineering employer, or identify technical disciplines, capabilities and project pipelines.

The source archive and its extracted text have recorded SHA256 hashes. A retained subset contains the 255 source rows used across this five-industry series, including the original size-band values. The included calculation script can reproduce every exported row from that subset. CSV blanks correspond to JSON nulls; rounding can leave shares above or below exactly 100%.

The Census methodology page currently warns that its guidance is being updated. This report remains tied to the archived 2023 file and its published record layout, and leaves future release procedures for review against their own documentation. The industry-code reference identifies the 2017 NAICS classification used for this vintage.

This analysis and its prose were prepared with AI assistance. Verum is responsible for the report. Recheck the calculations when a source correction or new data vintage is adopted, and preserve the 2023 baseline as a dated version. The preparation date records this analysis; the business counts retain their original source year.

Related research and account-data methods

• Accounting service establishments by state and size
• Where software publisher establishments are concentrated

For the next step, see market-sizing data work and how to define data-quality measures. Match the unit, industry scope and observation date before interpreting any ratio between your records and these aggregates.