Markets · Method
How we measure the markets
Where each figure on the market pages comes from, how it’s worked out, and what it can’t tell you.
Survey estimates 2020–2024 · population estimates 2025 · official business counts 2023 · map listings September 2026 · Data credits · How we measure
The market pages describe markets. They don’t judge a place or recommend a deal: a high score doesn’t make a site right for a given business, and a low one doesn’t rule one out. For the address itself, a site report counts what’s within a few miles of it.
The markets
Every figure is worked out for the U.S., the 50 states and DC, 387 metro areas, 538 small-town markets and 3,144 counties, using the official area definitions of 2023. Puerto Rico and the territories aren’t covered.
- A metro area is a core city of 50,000 people or more and the counties tied to it by commuting.
- A small-town market is the same around a town of 10,000 to 50,000.
- A county is a county or its equivalent: a parish, a borough, an independent city, or one of Connecticut’s planning regions.
A metro area that crosses a state line has its page under the first state in its name, and is listed in every state it reaches. Population, households, spending and listings are built up from neighborhoods and counties, so they add up; median income and the official business counts are published for each area in its own right.
The figures
- Map listings
- Businesses on public map listings in September 2026, kept when they’re marked open and placed with confidence, with duplicates at the same spot removed. Each listing counts in the county whose neighborhood centers it sits nearest. A business type counts the listings of its kind: for auto repair shops, general, specialty, body and glass repair. A listing is a chain location when it carries a brand, or its name appears at 15 or more places across the U.S. This is the same competitor count a site report makes.
- Listings per 10,000 households
- Listings divided by households, times 10,000. The index beside it puts a market against the U.S. rate: 100 is the same, 120 is 20% more listings per household.
- Household spending
- What the market’s own households spend in a year on each of 15 lines, such as vehicle maintenance and repairs or food away from home. It’s estimated from the incomes of the households in each neighborhood, using what households at each income spent nationally in 2024, adjusted for the region (and, for the vehicle lines, for how many vehicles households have). It counts what residents spend wherever they spend it, not what businesses take in. Funerals are the exception: they follow ages, not incomes, so that line is the deaths the market’s residents can expect in a year, at the national death rate for each age group (under 45, then by decade to 85 and over), times what funeral homes take in per death nationally. The index puts spending per household against the same figure for the whole U.S.: 100 is the same.
- Spending per listing
- A year of household spending on the type’s line, divided by its listings: the demand for each competitor, not any business’s revenue. Business types in one trade share a line (pizza places and coffee shops both draw on food away from home), so compare spending per listing between markets for the same type, or use its index against the U.S., which does exactly that. The real estate types’ line is all rent and homeowner costs, a measure of housing demand many times what agents, lenders or inspectors take in, so their pages give housing spending per listing as the index only, never in dollars.
- Official establishments
- Businesses with payroll, from the official business counts for 2023, for the industry the type belongs to. A few types share an industry there (pizza places and fast food are both limited-service restaurants; gyms and fitness studios are both fitness centers), so their official counts, one-person businesses and SBA-backed loans match, and the pages say the figure is the whole industry’s. A whole trade counts every industry its types do (auto repair and car care includes tire dealers; doctors, dentists and clinics includes chiropractors, optometrists, therapists and urgent care). Counts leave out places with fewer than 3, and a few aren’t published at all. Growth compares 2023 with 2019, and is shown only where 2019 had 20 or more; a metro area’s growth compares the same counties in both years, and is shown only where those counties’ published counts cover at least 90% of the area’s own. Households per establishment divides the market’s households by this count.
- Employees and annual payroll
- The same official counts’ employees and payroll for the year, for businesses with payroll only.
- One-person businesses
- Businesses with no payroll (most with the owner as the only worker), from the official counts for 2023. They’re published for some business types only; elsewhere the pages say so.
- SBA-backed loans
- Loans backed by the Small Business Administration to businesses of the type, from fiscal 2022 through June 2026, placed in a county by the borrower’s ZIP code.
- Population, growth and income
- Population, households, income, home values and jobs are survey estimates for 2020–2024, summed from neighborhoods. Population growth uses the yearly population estimates, 2020 to 2025. Median household income is the survey’s own figure for the area; its growth against 2015–2019 is before inflation, and is left out where the 2015–2019 survey drew the area differently (a metro area that has gained or lost counties since, Connecticut’s planning regions) and for counties under 10,000 people, whose medians move by tens of percent on sampling alone. Figures that can’t be right for a county of a few hundred people, such as its median age, aren’t shown there.
- Listings at the U.S. rate
- The listings a market would have if it had the U.S. ratio of listings to household spending on the line. More listings than that means more competitors for the spending than the national pattern; fewer means fewer.
The Groundwork market score
The score runs from 0 to 100 and compares a market with others of its kind for one business type: states with states, metro areas with metro areas, small-town markets with small-town markets, and counties with counties. It weighs four measures:
- 35%Household spending per competitor
- 25%Households per business with payroll
- 20%Population growth
- 20%Spending power
- Household spending per competitor: the year’s spending on the type’s line divided by its listings (for the real estate types, all housing costs per listing).
- Households per business with payroll: households divided by the official establishments. Where the official count isn’t published (fewer than 3), this part is left out and the other three share its weight. Types that share an official industry (pizza places and fast food) share this part too.
- Population growth: 2020 to 2025. Where it’s missing, the other three share its weight.
- Spending power: spending per household on the line, against the U.S.
Each measure is turned into a percentile among the market’s peers (0 is the lowest, 100 the highest), and the score is the weighted average, rounded. The rank orders the scored peers by score, nationally and among the markets based in the same state.
Some markets aren’t scored, since a few businesses would swing their figures:
- A market with fewer than 5 listings of the type. With one or two, spending per competitor is the whole spending line, and one listing more or less would move the market from the bottom of its peers to the top.
- Counties under 10,000 people, and the District of Columbia’s one county, which is ranked with the states.
- Every market of a kind, for a type where fewer than 30 of them have 5 or more listings (small-town markets for urgent care, for example): a percentile among a handful moves in big steps.
A higher score means that, taken together, the market has more household spending and more households for each business already there, faster population growth and more spending per household than similar markets. It doesn’t mean more of every measure. The words beside a score:
| Words | Score |
|---|---|
| Very high | 90–100 |
| High | 75–89 |
| Upper middle | 50–74 |
| Lower middle | 25–49 |
| Low | 10–24 |
| Very low | 0–9 |
Data years and updates
| Figure | Data | Compared with |
|---|---|---|
| Population, households, income, home values | Survey estimates 2020–2024 | Income growth against 2015–2019 |
| Population growth | Population estimates 2025 | Against 2020 |
| Businesses with payroll, employees, payroll | Official business counts 2023 | Growth against 2019 |
| One-person businesses | Official counts 2023 | Where published for the type |
| Household spending | Spending by income, 2024 | Applied to each neighborhood’s incomes |
| Competitors | Map listings, September 2026 | The same count as the site report |
| SBA-backed loans | Fiscal 2022 through June 2026 | By the borrower’s ZIP code |
These pages were built on October 1, 2026 and are rebuilt as new releases of the data arrive.
Each business type’s page offers its tables as a CSV file, and every market with every figure as an Excel file, free with an account.
What the figures can’t tell you
- Listings are noisy. Some closed businesses are still listed, some open ones aren’t, and a few are filed under the wrong kind of business. Home-based and mobile businesses are often missing.
- Official counts miss the smallest places. Counts under 3 aren’t published, and businesses without payroll are counted separately, for some types only.
- Survey estimates have margins of error, wider for small counties and small groups of people.
- Household spending is estimated, not measured. It follows income, region and vehicles, not local prices or tastes, and it counts residents’ spending, not visitors’.
- A market is not a site. A county or metro area can be served well overall and have gaps on one side of town. A site report looks at the few miles around an address instead.
The sources, their licenses and the changes made to them are on the data credits page. Figures are estimates for research only, not investment or real estate advice.
Screening a site or an acquisition?
A site report maps the competitors on map listings near an address and sizes the households and spending around it.
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures are estimates for research only. Not investment or real estate advice.