Methodology
Every figure on MarketScout traces back to one public dataset. This page explains exactly where the numbers come from and how the derived figures (density, comparisons) are computed.
Data source
All establishment, employment, and payroll figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 release — the most recent year available at time of writing. CBP reports the number of business establishments by industry (NAICS code) and county, along with employment and annual payroll, based on the Census Bureau's Business Register. It's the standard federal source for county-level industry statistics. Full source data and documentation: census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp .
County population figures (used to compute density) come from the Census Bureau's Vintage 2023 county population estimates.
What each figure means
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Establishments | Count of business locations in that industry and county, as of the CBP reference period (mid-March 2023). |
| Employment | Paid employees for those establishments, mid-March 2023 pay period. |
| Annual payroll | Total annual payroll for those establishments, in dollars. |
| Average business size | Employment ÷ establishments — a rough proxy for whether the industry in that county skews toward small independent shops or larger operators. |
| Density (per 10,000 residents) | Establishments ÷ county population × 10,000 — see calculation below. |
How density is calculated
Raw establishment counts aren't comparable across counties of very different sizes — a large county will naturally have more coffee shops than a small one. Density normalizes for that:
density per 10,000 residents = (establishments ÷ county population) × 10,000
This is the standard way to compare market saturation across places of different sizes. A county with a lower density has fewer businesses of that type per capita than a county with a higher density, all else equal.
How the national average is calculated
The national density figure shown on each industry page is the industry's true national establishment total (from CBP's national-level table, not summed from the covered counties) divided by total U.S. population, ×10,000 — the same formula as the county-level figure, applied at the national scale.
Suppressed and withheld data
The Census Bureau withholds employment and payroll figures for some industry/county
combinations to avoid disclosing data about individual companies (noise flags D and S in the source files). Where that applies, MarketScout
shows N/A for that field rather than guessing or omitting the row. Establishment
counts themselves are essentially never suppressed at this level, so density figures are not
affected by this — only employment, payroll, and average-business-size figures can show
N/A.
Coverage
MarketScout currently covers a set of consumer-facing industries across the most populous U.S. counties with available CBP data, as a phased launch. Counties or industries not yet listed simply haven't been added to this site — the underlying Census data covers nearly all U.S. counties and NAICS codes. The full dataset (100+ industries, all counties) is available on GitHub .