2022 Economic Census Concentration of Largest Firms
U.S. Census Bureau / accessed 2026-07-17. Source custody remains attached to every public sector row.
Joined Census sector evidence
Compare broad sectors using industry concentration, business entry, employment, and merger-review data. Census and HSR measures keep their own years and populations; unlike measures are not combined into a score.
Source-bounded sector composition
Color1978-2023 employment share change
BDS yeararea + color + readout
Selected / NAICS 51 / 2.7% of map areaInformationColor / -0.543 pp / Share loss
Four families, never one score.
BDS sector transition
Exact sector ledger
| Rank | Sector | 1978 count | 1978 share | 2023 count | 2023 share | Count change | Share change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Health care and social assistanceNAICS 62 | 5,848,107 | 8.646% | 21,997,571 | 16.474% | +276.1% | +7.828 pp |
| 2 | Administrative and support and waste management and remediation servicesNAICS 56 | 1,965,725 | 2.906% | 11,933,228 | 8.937% | +507.1% | +6.031 pp |
| 3 | Professional, scientific, and technical servicesNAICS 54 | 2,224,927 | 3.289% | 10,364,674 | 7.762% | +365.8% | +4.473 pp |
| 4 | Accommodation and food servicesNAICS 72 | 5,219,549 | 7.717% | 14,565,278 | 10.908% | +179.1% | +3.191 pp |
| 5 | Transportation and warehousingNAICS 48-49 | 2,425,680 | 3.586% | 6,450,641 | 4.831% | +165.9% | +1.245 pp |
| 6 | Educational servicesNAICS 61 | 1,279,753 | 1.892% | 3,782,935 | 2.833% | +195.6% | +0.941 pp |
| 7 | Arts, entertainment, and recreationNAICS 71 | 656,732 | 0.971% | 2,471,289 | 1.851% | +276.3% | +0.880 pp |
| 8 | Real estate and rental and leasingNAICS 53 | 1,024,213 | 1.514% | 2,403,647 | 1.800% | +134.7% | +0.286 pp |
| 9 | ConstructionNAICS 23 | 4,094,192 | 6.053% | 7,614,745 | 5.703% | +86.0% | -0.350 pp |
| 10 | Other services (except public administration)NAICS 81 | 3,164,591 | 4.679% | 5,677,219 | 4.252% | +79.4% | -0.427 pp |
| 11 | UtilitiesNAICS 22 | 657,647 | 0.972% | 661,624 | 0.495% | +0.6% | -0.477 pp |
| 12 | InformationNAICS 51 | 2,160,446 | 3.194% | 3,539,955 | 2.651% | +63.9% | -0.543 pp |
| 13 | Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extractionNAICS 21 | 711,847 | 1.052% | 568,964 | 0.426% | -20.1% | -0.626 pp |
| 14 | Finance and insuranceNAICS 52 | 4,107,264 | 6.072% | 6,912,028 | 5.176% | +68.3% | -0.896 pp |
| 15 | Wholesale tradeNAICS 42 | 3,825,404 | 5.656% | 6,222,521 | 4.660% | +62.7% | -0.996 pp |
| 16 | Retail tradeNAICS 44-45 | 9,944,538 | 14.702% | 16,068,436 | 12.034% | +61.6% | -2.668 pp |
| 17 | ManufacturingNAICS 31-33 | 18,328,635 | 27.098% | 12,293,106 | 9.206% | -32.9% | -17.892 pp |
Cross-domain sector workspace
Descriptive evidence plane
Selected sectorNAICS 51 / Information
Source custody and method
The sector code is the bridge. Concentration levels, strict historical changes, business flows, and HSR acquired-entity composition remain separate measures with separate denominators.
U.S. Census Bureau / accessed 2026-07-17. Source custody remains attached to every public sector row.
U.S. Census Bureau / accessed 2026-07-18. Source custody remains attached to every public sector row.
U.S. Census Bureau / accessed 2026-07-19. Source custody remains attached to every public sector row.
Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice. Acquired-entity sector counts, release shares, source wording, and review-stage aggregates retain each report's own published universe.
Each row joins 2022 six-digit Economic Census concentration-distribution summaries, strict 2017-2022 same-code and same-label industry history, and 2023 Business Dynamics Statistics sector flows. These vintages and universes differ, so associations are descriptive rather than same-period or causal. Sector medians are not sector HHI values, legal antitrust markets, liability findings, or composite competition scores.
BDS sectors outside the joined concentration universe: 11 Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting; 55 Management of companies and enterprises.
This bridge joins only the exact broad-sector NAICS code published by both sources. The 2022 Economic Census sector row measures economy-wide employer-firm structure, while each HSR sector aggregate sums the release's published acquired-entity 3-digit rows. The shared code does not define a legal antitrust market, measure a sector merger rate, establish competitive harm, or score agency performance.