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2022 Economic Census / NAICS 4251

Wholesale trade agents and brokers

The four largest firms in Wholesale trade agents and brokers accounted for 25.4% of the industry's 2022 sales, value of shipments, or revenue; the Census Bureau withheld its HHI. What is HHI?

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

Industry groupWholesale tradeDisclosure withheld

Revenue-based HHI

Withheld by Census

4251
03,500
Same-level median 163.7No published rank

National rank

N/A

of 232 published

Sector rank

N/A

of 55 published

Largest 4 firms

25.4%

Share of industry revenue

Revenue

$785.9B

Sales, shipments, or revenue

Employer firms

32.2K

32,160

Employment

246.1K

246,125

Five-year concentration trace

2017 label: Wholesale electronic markets and agents and brokers

2017 HHI228.7
2022 HHIUnavailable
Published changeNot compared
Open history profile
Industry profileWholesale trade agents and brokersIndustry group · HHI withheld · CR4 25.4%

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

Two-vintage industry profile

How this published industry row changed from 2017 to 2022

Inspect six Census measures, publication status, and this row's signed-change position among strict same-level peers.

Classification changedNAICS 4251

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index / HHI points

Not comparedNot compared from 2017

Same-level change rank

Not rankedOutside published pair rank
2017 Economic Census228.7
2022 Economic CensusNot published
National rank
Not ranked
Sector rank
Not ranked
National coverage
199 of 240
Sector coverage
17 of 18

Comparison evidence

The same code carried a different 2017 label: Wholesale electronic markets and agents and brokers. Raw values remain visible, but no delta is calculated.

Open exact change plane Exact history JSONExact history CSV2022 industry record
2017 source 2022 source
Five-year deltas are published only for rows whose NAICS code and industry label are identical in the 2017 and 2022 Census tables. This strict match is a conservative screening rule, not an official NAICS concordance or evidence of causation. Revenue changes are nominal and are not adjusted for inflation.

Census formation and sector context

The broader Wholesale formation environment

60 monthly observations for parent sector NAICS 42; none are assigned to this narrower industry.
Parent-sector context
Business Applications
9,704
Jul 2026 monthly count
Application annual change
+5.8%
Same month one year earlier
U.S. application share
1.7%
Share of national applications
High-propensity mix
24.9%
2,414 applications
Projected formations
493
Modeled four-quarter source projection
Establishment entry rate
6.7%
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 Wholesale tradeBusiness Applications and the high-propensity subset share one count axis. The chapter describes the selected industry's broader parent sector.20K15K10K5K0Aug 2021Nov 2022Feb 2024May 2025Jul 2026
111,965 applications / latest 12 months27,942 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
Broader-sector boundary

Every formation and business-dynamics reading in this chapter describes the broader Wholesale trade sector (NAICS 42), not Wholesale trade agents and brokers (NAICS 4251) by itself. 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

The broader Trade + transport labor environment

The parent NAICS 42 bridge supplies context only; no reading is assigned to this narrower industry.
Parent-group context
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 42
Wholesale trade
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
Parent-group boundary

Every JOLTS and CES reading in this chapter describes the broader Trade, transportation, and utilities and Trade, transportation, and utilities BLS groups mapped through parent sector NAICS 42, not Wholesale trade agents and brokers (NAICS 4251) by itself. 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

The broader Wholesale output environment

Parent NAICS 42 supplies context only; no BEA value is assigned to this narrower industry.
Parent-sector context
GDP share
6.2%
2025 current-dollar composition
Real growth
-5.4%
2026-Q1 annualized BEA convention
Growth contribution
-0.35 pp
2026-Q1 contribution to real GDP growth
Real quantity index
100.8
2026-Q1 / 2017=100
Current value added
$2.04T
2026-Q1 seasonally adjusted annual rate

Annual composition trajectory

Share of current-dollar GDP

1997-2025
Wholesale annual share of current-dollar GDPBEA value-added share from 1997 through 2025. This is an accounting composition measure, not a market share.7.0%6.5%6.0%5.5%5.0%19972004201120182025
6.2%19970.0 pplong-run shift6.2%2025
Source custodyU.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis / 2026-06-25GDP by Industry, value-added tablesOfficial BEA releaseAccess reviewed 2026-08-15
Parent-sector boundary

Every BEA reading in this chapter describes parent sector Wholesale trade (NAICS 42), not Wholesale trade agents and brokers (NAICS 4251) by itself. No value is allocated to the narrower industry. 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

Production industries inside the broader Wholesale trade sector

Parent NAICS 42 supplies a classification directory only; no requirement coefficient is assigned to this narrower profile.
Sector directory only
BEA lines in scope
1
inside NAICS 42
Annual matrices
28
1997-2024
Raw matrix cells
1,988
retained without aggregation
Net requirement
Not constructed
not additive across buyer columns
Own requirement
Not constructed
no sector diagonal constructed

Published production directory

1 BEA industries map to this parent sector

42Wholesale trade
Source custodyU.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis / 2025-09-25Input-Output Accounts, domestic requirements tablesOfficial BEA tablesAccess reviewed 2026-08-15
Directory boundary

This chapter is a directory of 1 BEA summary industries classified inside parent sector Wholesale trade (NAICS 42). No coefficient is averaged, summed across buyer columns, or allocated to Wholesale trade agents and brokers (NAICS 4251). 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.

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 firms25.4%
CR8Eight largest firms31%
CR20Twenty largest firms38.6%
CR50Fifty largest firms44.8%

Same-level benchmark

Position in the hierarchy

MeasureThis rowMedian
HHID163.7
CR425.4%21.6%
Revenue$785.9B$66.8B
Firms32.2K5.5K

HHI distance from median

Not published

NAICS hierarchy

Move up or down the classification tree

Level 4 of 6
42 Wholesale trade425 Wholesale trade agents and brokers4251 Wholesale trade agents and brokers

Direct child categories

42512Wholesale trade agents and brokers

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 4251Download 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
Wholesale trade agents and brokers industry concentration (NAICS 4251) | Antitrust Radar