Economic Reports

County Business Patterns: NAICS 2006

Most Missourians (85.6 percent) work in small businesses, according to a newly released County Business Patterns: NAICS 2006 Report. As shown on Map 1, which displays the percent of small businesses by county, in many of those counties almost all commerce is conducted on a small scale.

While the average Missouri business employs 16 workers, in 53 counties there are one or more “very large” businesses employing more than 500 workers. See Table 1. Missouri County Business Patterns (NAICS 2006) (pdf) (html)

Large businesses are prominent in metro areas

Large businesses (100-499 employees) are concentrated in metropolitan St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield. The workforce in four metropolitan counties (St. Louis, Jackson, Greene and St. Charles) accounts for 1,189,077 workers, or nearly half (48.1 percent) of the 2,468,065 state total. Nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of Missouri workers are employed in St. Louis County, which has the greatest number (91) of “very large” businesses in the state.

St. Louis City reported 10,134 businesses, with a workforce of 271,016 persons, and annual (2006) payroll of $12.2 billion.

Professional and technical jobs pay highest average salaries

Missouri’s workforce is concentrated in health care & social assistance (362,926), retail trade (326,498) and manufacturing (305,447). These, together with professional, scientific & technical services and finance & insurance, employ about half (51.4%) of the workforce and account for over half of annual payroll (53.9%). Average salaries range from $21,568 in retail to $54,013 for professional services. See Table 2, below.

About County Business Patterns

The County Business Patterns NAICS 2006 report includes data on the number of establishments, number of employees, and quarterly and annual payroll for nearly 1,200 industries. Self-employed and government workers are excluded from these data, in contrast to the Bureau of Economic Analysis data which include both these categories. Both CBP and BEA data report employment based on place of work rather than place of residence.

For more information about specific Missouri counties, see OSEDA Summary of County Social and Economic Indicators.

Users familiar with the Missouri Census Data Center's data archive query tools (Uexplore/Dexter) can access these data (for the entire U.S.) in the County Business Patterns data directory, best accessed using the custom index page.