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2022 Economic Census / NAICS 22

Utilities

The four largest firms in Utilities accounted for 14.7% of the industry's 2022 sales, value of shipments, or revenue, and its concentration (HHI 148) ranks 3 of 17 sectors in the Economic Census. What is HHI?

National employer-firm concentration for this sector, measured from sales, value of shipments, or revenue. Census categories are statistical groupings, not necessarily antitrust markets.

SectorUtilitiesUpper quartile

Revenue-based HHI

147.7

22
03,500
Same-level median 2388th percentile

National rank

#3

of 17 published

Sector rank

N/A

of 9 published

Largest 4 firms

14.7%

Share of industry revenue

Revenue

$766B

Sales, shipments, or revenue

Employer firms

7.3K

7,314

Employment

699.2K

699,168

Four source-bounded systems

Sector evidence passport

Open sector atlas

The passport juxtaposes four source-bounded sector signals for navigation. Each cell retains its own period, denominator, source, and rank universe; the cells are not combined into a sector score, merger rate, legal market, causal estimate, or assessment of competitive harm.

Industry profileUtilitiesSector · HHI 147.7 · CR4 14.7%

  • GeographyUnited StatesNational firm totals
  • UniverseEmployer firmsFirms with payroll
  • MeasurementRevenue concentrationSales, shipments, or revenue
  • Permitted useScreening onlyNot a legal market definition

Longitudinal sector pulse

How typical detailed industries changed inside Utilities

Compare six strict-match medians, their publication coverage, and each sector's position among 17 economy-wide rows.

NAICS 22

Median HHI-point change across strict six-digit matches

-23.9 pts#17 highest change of 17 sectors

Economy median

+1.6 ptsAcross sector medians
2017 paired median
692.4
2022 paired median
602
Published pairs
7 of 14
Direction mix
1 up / 6 down

Interpretation

The typical published detailed-industry HHI moved -23.9 pts. This distribution statistic is separate from the official broad-sector HHI row.

Classification boundary: 0 changed and 0 new detailed rows remain outside strict deltas.

Open economy sector atlas Detailed change JSONDetailed change CSV
Sector rows summarize strict six-digit NAICS matches. Their medians are not sector HHI values, legal antitrust markets, liability findings, or causal estimates. Vintage medians and the median of row-level changes are distinct distribution statistics and need not reconcile. Publication coverage varies by metric, and revenue changes are nominal.

Census formation and sector context

Monthly formation signals beside annual sector structure

60 monthly observations for the exact NAICS 22 broad-sector contract.
Direct broad-sector join
Business Applications
566
Jul 2026 monthly count
Application annual change
-5.7%
Same month one year earlier
U.S. application share
0.1%
Share of national applications
High-propensity mix
7.8%
44 applications
Projected formations
18
Modeled four-quarter source projection
Establishment entry rate
5.3%
2023 annual BDS rate

Monthly source trajectory

Applications and high-propensity applications

Aug 2021 to Jul 2026
Business ApplicationsHigh-Propensity Business Applications
Sixty-month business application trajectory for UtilitiesBusiness Applications and the high-propensity subset share one count axis. The chapter describes the selected broad sector.1K7505002500Aug 2021Nov 2022Feb 2024May 2025Jul 2026
6,842 applications / latest 12 months674 high-propensity / latest 12 months

Source clocks

Four releases, three measurement systems

Business Formation Statistics
2026-07
monthly applications and projected formations
Business Dynamics Statistics
2023
annual employer-establishment flows
Economic Census structure
2022
median across detailed-industry HHI rows
Strict concentration history
2017-2022
same-code and same-label detailed pairs
Source custody
Exact broad-sector boundary

NAICS 22 is the exact broad-sector contract used by this chapter. This atlas joins only exact broad-sector NAICS contracts across three separate Census systems: monthly Business Formation Statistics, annual Business Dynamics Statistics, and Economic Census industry structure. The release clocks, populations, denominators, and measures remain distinct. Positions are descriptive context, not composite competition scores, causal estimates, legal antitrust markets, or evidence that applications, entry, concentration, and competitive effects are interchangeable.

BLS labor and payroll context

Trade + transport signals across linked sectors

4 Census sectors share these BLS source-group readings; none is allocated a separate value.
Shared BLS group
Job openings
4.4%
Jun 2026 JOLTS rate
Hires
3.9%
Jun 2026 JOLTS rate
Quits
2.5%
Jun 2026 JOLTS rate
Layoffs + discharges
1.1%
Jun 2026 JOLTS rate
All employees
28.7M
28,708 thousand payroll jobs
Weekly hours
34.1
0.0 hrs from year earlier
Hourly earnings
$32.00
+3.2% from year earlier

JOLTS worker flows

Openings and quits on native rate scales

Jul 2021 to Jun 2026
Job openings rateQuits rate
Sixty-month JOLTS openings and quits ratesJob openings and quits rates for the mapped Trade, transportation, and utilities source group. The measures keep their published denominators and are not a labor-market power score.8.0%6.0%4.0%2.0%0.0%Jul 2021Oct 2022Jan 2024Apr 2025Jun 2026
+0.9 pp openings / year earlier+0.2 pp quits / year earlier

CES payroll context

Payroll jobs and nominal earnings, indexed

Aug 2021 = 100
Payroll jobsHourly earnings
Sixty-month CES payroll jobs and hourly earnings indexesPayroll jobs and nominal average hourly earnings for the mapped Trade, transportation, and utilities source group, each independently indexed to 100 in the first displayed month. Native levels remain in the readouts.12511811010395Aug 2021Nov 2022Feb 2024May 2025Jul 2026
-0.1% payroll jobs / year earlier+3.2% nominal earnings / year earlier

Declared classification bridge

One profile, two source-owned industry groups

Selected Census parent
NAICS 22
Utilities
JOLTS group
400000
Trade, transportation, and utilities
CES supersector
40
Trade, transportation, and utilities
Mapped Census sectors
4
22, 42, 44-45, 48-49

Independent release clocks

Two monthly systems, no merged series

JOLTS worker flows
2026-06
60 displayed months · latest preliminary
CES payroll context
2026-07
60 displayed months · latest preliminary
Source custody
Shared-group boundary

The selected Utilities sector (NAICS 22) is one of 4 Census-sector contexts attached to the broader Trade, transportation, and utilities JOLTS and Trade, transportation, and utilities CES groups. Their published values cannot be allocated to this sector alone. JOLTS industry rates describe national labor demand and worker-flow activity in broad BLS industry groups. They do not measure employer concentration, monopsony power, wages, bargaining power, job quality, local labor-market conditions, worker substitutability, a legal labor market, or the competitive cause of a change. The job openings rate uses employment plus openings as its denominator. Hires, quits, and layoffs and discharges use employment. Rates may be compared across published industry groups within the same measure, but different measures must not be added together or treated as a common flow balance. CES employment, hours, and earnings describe national payroll jobs and establishment averages in broad private-industry groups. They do not measure unique workers, vacancies, employer concentration, monopsony power, bargaining power, job quality, a local or occupational labor market, a legal antitrust market, or the competitive cause of a change. All-employee hourly earnings are current-dollar averages and are not adjusted for inflation. Changes can reflect shifts in industry and worker composition. Employment is reported in thousands of payroll jobs, so multiple jobholders may be counted more than once. Compare industries only within the same published measure; do not add or ratio the three measures into a common score. The two releases remain separate and are not combined into a labor-market, monopsony, competition, welfare, or causal score.

BEA industry output context

Utilities in the U.S. value-added map

Exact broad-sector bridge from Census NAICS 22 to BEA line 10.
Exact sector context
GDP share
1.5%
2025 current-dollar composition
Real growth
+8.3%
2026-Q1 annualized BEA convention
Growth contribution
+0.12 pp
2026-Q1 contribution to real GDP growth
Real quantity index
113.8
2026-Q1 / 2017=100
Current value added
$491.94B
2026-Q1 seasonally adjusted annual rate

Annual composition trajectory

Share of current-dollar GDP

1997-2025
Utilities annual share of current-dollar GDPBEA value-added share from 1997 through 2025. This is an accounting composition measure, not a market share.3.0%2.5%2.0%1.5%1.0%19972004201120182025
2.0%1997-0.5 pplong-run shift1.5%2025
Source custodyU.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis / 2026-06-25GDP by Industry, value-added tablesOfficial BEA releaseAccess reviewed 2026-08-15
Exact broad-sector boundary

BEA line 10 and Census NAICS 22 share the declared broad-sector classification used by this profile. BEA value added measures an industry's contribution to GDP. It is not sales, gross output, profit, a markup, market share, concentration, a legal antitrust market, or evidence of competitive harm or causation. Current-dollar value-added shares reflect both prices and quantities. Real value added uses chained 2017 dollars and is suitable for growth comparisons, but chained-dollar industry components are not additive. Quarterly levels are seasonally adjusted at annual rates, and quarterly growth and contribution measures retain BEA's published annualized convention. The BEA table contains nested industries, cross-industry aggregates, and addenda. Only the 20 major-industry rows form the composition view; summing those rows with their children, parent aggregates, or addenda would double count activity.

BEA domestic production requirements

Utilities in the U.S. production network

Exact published code bridge from Census NAICS 22 to BEA summary industry 22.
Exact 71-industry line
BEA lines in scope
1
one exact published industry
Annual matrices
28
1997-2024
Raw matrix cells
1,988
retained without aggregation
Net requirement
1.4615
domestic output per $1 final use
Own requirement
1.0451
diagonal direct + indirect

Strongest external requirements

Suppliers required by Utilities

Miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services5412OP / Professional services0.0369Oil and gas extraction211 / Mining0.0356Pipeline transportation486 / Transportation0.0250Administrative and support services561 / Administrative services0.0249Other real estateORE / Real estate0.0245Wholesale trade42 / Wholesale0.0219Federal Reserve banks, credit intermediation, and related activities521CI / Finance0.0217Petroleum and coal products324 / Manufacturing0.0184
Source custodyU.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis / 2025-09-25Input-Output Accounts, domestic requirements tablesOfficial BEA tablesAccess reviewed 2026-08-15
Exact accounting line

Census NAICS 22 and BEA summary industry 22 share the exact published code used by this profile. A domestic total-requirements coefficient reports the U.S. output required from the supplier-row industry, directly and indirectly, per dollar of output delivered to final use by the buyer-column industry. It is not observed spending, a contract, a firm supplier link, market share, concentration, a legal antitrust market, competitive harm, or causation. Rows are supplying industries and columns are buyer industries delivering output to final use. Reading down a buyer column traces upstream requirements; reading across a supplier row traces the industries whose final-use output requires that supplier. BEA requirements tables use fixed input structures, constant returns to scale, and no input substitution. Coefficients are average, ex-post industry relationships; domestic import adjustments are estimated and do not identify firm-specific sourcing. Diagonal values include an industry's own direct and indirect requirements. Published negative coefficients are retained as accounting adjustments and must not be ranked as positive supply requirements.

Longitudinal sector profile

Business formation and job flows since 1978

46 annual BDS records compare Utilities with the national series while preserving the BDS universe.
Utilities
5.266%
2023 sector rate
United States
10.608%
2023 national rate
Sector gap
-5.342 pp
Below U.S. rate
Joined-sector rank
#17
of 17 by magnitude

Establishment entry rate

Utilities and the United States

Entering establishments as a share of the Census BDS establishment denominator.
UtilitiesUnited States
2023Utilities5.266%United States10.608%Gap -5.342 pp
1978: United States 15.146%; Utilities 8.006%1979: United States 13.970%; Utilities 6.596%1980: United States 12.806%; Utilities 4.733%1981: United States 12.797%; Utilities 5.136%1982: United States 12.464%; Utilities 3.778%1983: United States 13.389%; Utilities 4.911%1984: United States 14.534%; Utilities 5.974%1985: United States 13.810%; Utilities 5.248%1986: United States 14.095%; Utilities 6.347%1987: United States 14.325%; Utilities 5.294%1988: United States 13.959%; Utilities 7.523%1989: United States 13.368%; Utilities 6.343%1990: United States 12.683%; Utilities 7.431%1991: United States 12.358%; Utilities 9.160%1992: United States 11.577%; Utilities 8.387%1993: United States 11.509%; Utilities 6.427%1994: United States 11.885%; Utilities 5.835%1995: United States 12.058%; Utilities 6.797%1996: United States 11.795%; Utilities 8.110%1997: United States 12.200%; Utilities 6.121%1998: United States 11.438%; Utilities 9.203%1999: United States 11.115%; Utilities 9.838%2000: United States 10.848%; Utilities 9.670%2001: United States 10.990%; Utilities 8.952%2002: United States 11.911%; Utilities 7.503%2003: United States 11.425%; Utilities 8.470%2004: United States 11.511%; Utilities 6.886%2005: United States 11.615%; Utilities 6.140%2006: United States 12.495%; Utilities 6.709%2007: United States 11.761%; Utilities 6.413%2008: United States 10.307%; Utilities 8.100%2009: United States 9.281%; Utilities 7.736%2010: United States 9.495%; Utilities 6.549%2011: United States 9.886%; Utilities 5.769%2012: United States 10.018%; Utilities 5.447%2013: United States 9.807%; Utilities 5.741%2014: United States 9.906%; Utilities 4.952%2015: United States 10.025%; Utilities 5.463%2016: United States 10.194%; Utilities 6.103%2017: United States 9.675%; Utilities 6.097%2018: United States 9.414%; Utilities 10.765%2019: United States 9.613%; Utilities 5.085%2020: United States 9.637%; Utilities 5.005%2021: United States 10.845%; Utilities 6.660%2022: United States 11.651%; Utilities 7.818%2023: United States 10.608%; Utilities 5.266%
1978
8.006%
-2.74 pp to latest
2018
10.765%
Lower than 2018
Series high / 2018
10.765%
Highest published rate
Series low / 1982
3.778%
Lowest published rate

Exact annual series

Sector and national values

2023 back to 1978
Establishment entry rate for Utilities and the United States, with the sector-minus-national gap.
Year22United StatesGap
20235.266%10.608%-5.342 pp
20227.818%11.651%-3.833 pp
20216.66%10.845%-4.185 pp
20205.005%9.637%-4.632 pp
20195.085%9.613%-4.528 pp
201810.765%9.414%+1.351 pp
20176.097%9.675%-3.578 pp
20166.103%10.194%-4.091 pp
20155.463%10.025%-4.562 pp
20144.952%9.906%-4.954 pp
20135.741%9.807%-4.066 pp
20125.447%10.018%-4.571 pp
20115.769%9.886%-4.117 pp
20106.549%9.495%-2.946 pp
20097.736%9.281%-1.545 pp
20088.1%10.307%-2.207 pp
20076.413%11.761%-5.348 pp
20066.709%12.495%-5.786 pp
20056.14%11.615%-5.475 pp
20046.886%11.511%-4.625 pp
20038.47%11.425%-2.955 pp
20027.503%11.911%-4.408 pp
20018.952%10.99%-2.038 pp
20009.67%10.848%-1.178 pp
19999.838%11.115%-1.277 pp
19989.203%11.438%-2.235 pp
19976.121%12.2%-6.079 pp
19968.11%11.795%-3.685 pp
19956.797%12.058%-5.261 pp
19945.835%11.885%-6.05 pp
19936.427%11.509%-5.082 pp
19928.387%11.577%-3.19 pp
19919.16%12.358%-3.198 pp
19907.431%12.683%-5.252 pp
19896.343%13.368%-7.025 pp
19887.523%13.959%-6.436 pp
19875.294%14.325%-9.031 pp
19866.347%14.095%-7.748 pp
19855.248%13.81%-8.562 pp
19845.974%14.534%-8.56 pp
19834.911%13.389%-8.478 pp
19823.778%12.464%-8.686 pp
19815.136%12.797%-7.661 pp
19804.733%12.806%-8.073 pp
19796.596%13.97%-7.374 pp
19788.006%15.146%-7.14 pp

Sector structure lab

Map concentration inside Utilities

Each bubble is one six-digit industry. Horizontal position is revenue-based HHI, vertical position is CR4, and bubble area follows the selected economic scale.

Detailed industries14Six-digit rows
Median HHI615.99 published
Median CR441.6%14 published
HHI 2,500+0Detailed rows
Published weight90.8%Revenue in chart

Bubble area = revenue

9 rows have both HHI and CR4 / 5 HHI values withheld

Top-five revenue share / 94.0%
NAICS 221210: Natural gas distribution; HHI 386.5; CR4 29.5%; Revenue $182.7B; 23.85% of sectorNAICS 221112: Fossil fuel electric power generation; HHI 180.8; CR4 16.2%; Revenue $85.5B; 11.16% of sectorNAICS 221121: Electric bulk power transmission and control; HHI 602; CR4 39.3%; Revenue $17.6B; 2.30% of sectorNAICS 221114: Solar electric power generation; HHI 615.9; CR4 43.3%; Revenue $5.5B; 0.72% of sectorNAICS 221320: Sewage treatment facilities; HHI 1,003.4; CR4 54.6%; Revenue $2.4B; 0.32% of sectorNAICS 221116: Geothermal electric power generation; HHI 2,055.1; CR4 83.6%; Revenue $1.1B; 0.15% of sectorNAICS 221117: Biomass electric power generation; HHI 638; CR4 39.9%; Revenue $947.9M; 0.12% of sectorNAICS 221118: Other electric power generation; HHI 881.4; CR4 50.5%; Revenue $41.5M; 0.01% of sectorNAICS 221122: Electric power distribution; HHI 210.6; CR4 17.3%; Revenue $399.4B; 52.14% of sector
0-499500-9991,000-1,4991,500-2,4992,500+Withheld

Disclosure lane

Rows missing HHI or CR4 stay outside the numerical plane.

5 rows / 9.2% of revenue
221113Nuclear electric power generation$34.6B / 4.52%221310Water supply and irrigation systems$16.3B / 2.13%221115Wind electric power generation$14.2B / 1.86%221111Hydroelectric power generation$4.3B / 0.56%

Active detailed industry

Electric power distributionNAICS 221122
HHI210.6
CR417.3%
Revenue$399.4B#1 / 52.14% of sector
Open evidence profile

Largest by revenue

Hover or focus to inspect

Top 8
01Electric power distribution221122$399.4B52.1%02Natural gas distribution221210$182.7B23.9%03Fossil fuel electric power generation221112$85.5B11.2%04Nuclear electric power generation221113$34.6B4.5%05Electric bulk power transmission and control221121$17.6B2.3%06Water supply and irrigation systems221310$16.3B2.1%07Wind electric power generation221115$14.2B1.9%08Solar electric power generation221114$5.5B0.7%

Continue analysis

Compare top fourCurrent revenue leadersSector JSON14 detailed rowsSector CSVNotebook-ready packet

Bubble size describes economic weight inside this NAICS sector. HHI and CR4 remain national statistical screens, not product-market definitions or findings of market power.

Sector intelligence dossier

From industry structure to antitrust evidence

Join the Census screen for Utilities to descendant curated markets, public enforcement records, research outputs, and the next evidence queue.

Observatory coverage

Research coverage gap

NAICS 22 / national sector screen

Detailed industries

14

9 HHI published

Curated markets

0

0 exact NAICS crosswalks

Policy actions

0

0 linked reports

Evidence sources

0

0 Census HHI at 2,500+

Explicit research gap

No descendant market dossier is curated yet

The sector remains fully available as a Census structure screen. Product boundaries, geographic scope, and market-specific public sources still need to be assembled before a legal-market bridge can be published.

Market-definition protocol

Start with published Census signals

221116Geothermal electric power generation2,055.1221320Sewage treatment facilities1,003.4221118Other electric power generation881.4

Descendant NAICS codes provide a research crosswalk only. They do not make a curated product and geographic market equivalent to its Census industry, and market metrics are never aggregated into a sector score.

Review method

Firm concentration ladder

How much revenue the largest firms hold

Each rung widens the group of largest firms included in the Census concentration ratio.

CR4Four largest firms14.7%
CR8Eight largest firms25.4%
CR20Twenty largest firms48%
CR50Fifty largest firms70.6%

Same-level benchmark

Position in the hierarchy

MeasureThis rowMedian
HHI147.723
CR414.7%6.9%
Revenue$766B$1.3T
Firms7.3K265.5K

HHI distance from median

+124.7

NAICS hierarchy

Move up or down the classification tree

Level 2 of 6
22 Utilities

Direct child categories

221Utilities

Federal merger-review composition

Where NAICS 22 appears in HSR review releases

Each release aggregates its own published acquired-entity 3-digit rows. Volume, review stages, labels, denominators, and source custody remain separate from the Census concentration screen.

Open filtered HSR atlas

FY2023 sector aggregate

Utilities

1 published 3-digit row

Exact code + normalized label
48adjusted transactionsRank 11 of 19classified HSR sectors
Published share
2.8%
of adjusted release transactions
Agency clearances
1
0.5% of release / rank 14
Second Requests
1
2.7% of release / rank 7
Intra-industry flags
3
3.8% of release / rank 6

FY2024 sector aggregate

Utilities

1 published 3-digit row

Exact code + normalized label
56adjusted transactionsRank 11 of 19classified HSR sectors
Published share
2.8%
of adjusted release transactions
Agency clearances
6
3.3% of release / rank 10
Second Requests
0
0.0% of release / rank 17
Intra-industry flags
4
5.0% of release / rank 7

Adjacent-release shift

Stable HSR sector code and label

FY2023 to FY2024

Exact HSR sector code 22 is published in FY2023 and FY2024 with a stable source label. The deltas compare adjacent release aggregates without recoding their 3-digit rows.

Transactions
+8
Published share
0.0 pp
Clearances
+5
Second Requests
-1
Intra-industry
+1
Published rows
0

Interpretation boundary

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.

Intra-industry field

An intra-industry transaction means the acquiring and acquired persons both reported revenue in the same 3-digit NAICS code. It does not establish a horizontal overlap, relevant antitrust market, or competitive effect.

Nearest structural neighbors

Comparable fingerprints across the economy

Smallest mean national-percentile gaps across HHI, CR4, CR8, revenue, employment, and employer firms, using the same published dimensions as this row.

Evidence access

Reuse this exact row

Filtered JSONNAICS 22Download CSVOne-row data packetCensus source archiveEC2200SIZECONCEN

Source citation

U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, EC2200SIZECONCEN: Selected Sectors - Concentration of Largest Firms for the United States, released April 2025.

Industry screen, not market conclusion

A NAICS industry is a statistical classification, not a legally defined antitrust market. Use these national revenue concentration measures to screen where deeper product and geographic market analysis may be warranted, not to infer market power or liability.

Market definition method
Utilities industry concentration (NAICS 22) | Antitrust Radar