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A Harris County business landscape starts from a simple fact: a county with 109,874 employer locations has a crowd in every trade, so raw counts say little by themselves. The table compares each trade with the typical county of 20,000 or more residents by dividing locations by population and expressing the answer as a multiple. A multiple above 1 means more locations per resident than the typical county has. A multiple below 1 means fewer, which in a county this big can still mean hundreds of competitors.
Every figure is county-wide, and Harris County is not one market. A plumber in Katy competes with the Katy plumbers, not the ones in Baytown, and a dentist inside the Loop faces a different set of offices from one in Tomball. Use the table to see how your trade compares with a typical county, then place it in Harris County, Texas by ring, and read the coverage map to find your own ring. Counts cover employer locations only, so sole proprietors and many one-person shops are missing.
The figures are Census County Business Patterns for 2017 and 2022, so they are survey years and not live counts, and they describe trade competition in Harris County, Texas as a whole. They are still the best published guide to how crowded a trade is, and they get more useful when you read them with the zone and route detail.
The full table
| Trade | Locations | Per 10,000 residents | Versus typical county | Under 10 staff | With 20+ staff | Change since 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential remodelers | 887 | 1.8 | 0.6 times | 93 of 100 | 27 | +56.4 percent |
| Roofing contractors | 295 | 0.6 | 0.7 times | 80 of 100 | 32 | +44.6 percent |
| Electrical contractors | 807 | 1.7 | 0.7 times | 65 of 100 | 176 | +12.2 percent |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 1,184 | 2.4 | 0.8 times | 73 of 100 | 185 | +10.8 percent |
| Insurance agencies and brokerages | 1,985 | 4.1 | 1.1 times | 89 of 100 | 87 | +8.4 percent |
| Real estate agents and brokers | 1,720 | 3.6 | 1.3 times | 96 of 100 | 32 | +35.6 percent |
| Law offices | 3,160 | 6.5 | 2.2 times | 85 of 100 | 245 | +6.6 percent |
| Accounting and CPA firms | 761 | 1.6 | 1.2 times | 84 of 100 | 60 | -2.6 percent |
| Janitorial services | 595 | 1.2 | 0.7 times | 71 of 100 | 107 | +10.8 percent |
| Landscaping services | 677 | 1.4 | 0.4 times | 68 of 100 | 130 | +5 percent |
| Physicians offices | 3,716 | 7.7 | 1.9 times | 80 of 100 | 304 | -4.5 percent |
| Dentists | 2,279 | 4.7 | 1.6 times | 80 of 100 | 62 | +5.7 percent |
| Full-service restaurants | 3,473 | 7.2 | 1.1 times | 44 of 100 | 1,334 | +15 percent |
| General automotive repair | 1,032 | 2.1 | 0.8 times | 88 of 100 | 43 | +6.1 percent |
| Beauty salons | 975 | 2 | 1.1 times | 86 of 100 | 44 | +13.4 percent |
Source: Census County Business Patterns, 2022 against 2017, employer locations only. Typical county means the middle county with 20,000 or more residents.
The crowded end
For owners in Harris County, law offices lead the density list at 6.5 per 10,000 residents, 2.2 times the typical county, with 3,160 locations. Physician offices follow at 1.9 times, with 3,716 locations, dentists at 1.6 times with 2,279, real estate agents and brokers at 1.3 times with 1,720, and accounting firms at 1.2 times. All of them are mostly small: about 85 of every 100 law offices have fewer than 10 staff, and the figure for real estate is 96 of 100.
Crowded does not mean closed. It means a new entrant meets many established names, and the sheer number of offices makes a general "Houston lawyer" or "Houston dentist" search hard to win. Those trades usually do better with narrower pages: a specific practice area in a specific zone, or a Google Business Profile that matches a neighborhood. The big offices also show up. 245 law offices and 304 physician offices have 20 or more staff, so a small practice competes with both the corner office and the large group.
Two of the crowded trades also shrank since 2017: physician offices lost 4.5 percent and accounting firms 2.6 percent. A shrinking, crowded trade often means offices are merging into larger groups, which changes who a small practice is up against in search. The Census table does not say why, so treat that reading as a question to ask, not an answer.
Where each trade sits
These trades sit above the typical county and are dominated by offices with under 10 staff. Paid search can speed things up, and Maps profiles and practice-area pages carry the organic work. Insurance agencies number 1,985 locations at 1.1 times the typical county.
Residential remodelers are at 0.6 times the typical county but added 56.4 percent since 2017, and roofing is at 0.7 times with 44.6 percent growth. More businesses are entering, and storm seasons bring urgent searches, so early work on pages and reviews matters.
Restaurants lead with 3,473 locations and 1,334 with 20 or more staff. Plumbing, heating and air conditioning have 1,184 locations at 0.8 times, and electrical 807 at 0.7 times. They are not crowded by the ratio, but the large operators are real competitors.
Landscaping is the thinnest row at 0.4 times the typical county with 677 locations, and auto repair is at 0.8 times. Beauty salons are near typical at 1.1 times and grew 13.4 percent. A thin trade can still have strong competitors, because a county this big makes any trade a crowd.
What grew
Between 2017 and 2022 the fastest-growing rows were residential remodelers (56.4 percent), roofing contractors (44.6 percent) and real estate agents and brokers (35.6 percent), followed by full-service restaurants at 15 percent and beauty salons at 13.4 percent. The county has hurricane and flood history that includes Harvey in 2017 and Beryl in 2024, and a long run of new homes, so repair, rebuilding and housing trades have plenty of reasons to expand. The Census does not say why, and it counts locations rather than revenue.
Growth in the number of employer locations means more voices in the same search results and ad auctions. A roofer with a page for Katy and a page for Cypress now competes with the new entrants, so staying ahead takes continuing work on pages, reviews and tracking. A trade that has not grown is not necessarily safe either; it may simply have a stable set of large names that are hard to dislodge.
New homes
| Year | New residential units authorized |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 35,204 |
| 2022 | 38,789 |
| 2023 | 34,593 |
| 2024 | 29,936 |
| 2025 | 30,879 |
Census Building Permits Survey, new privately owned housing units authorized by permit.
Permits and trades
The county has 1,851,489 housing units, and tens of thousands of new ones are authorized every year. Each new household needs a plumber, an electrician, an air-conditioning technician, a roofer, a landscaper and, eventually, a dentist, a doctor and an insurance agent, and most of those households do not yet know a single local business. For a trade that serves new neighborhoods, that makes the permit numbers a rough guide to where fresh customers will search in the next few years.
A permit count is not a forecast of calls. The drop from 2022 to 2024 shows that new-home trades see a cycle, and repair and replacement work in older neighborhoods continues regardless. A business that serves both ought to keep pages for each. The zone pages and the website plan explain how to give a fast-growing outer-ring area and an older inner-ring area their own pages.
Putting it to work
Find your trade, note whether it sits above or below the typical county and then decide whether your ring is the crowded one. A roofer in the outer ring may face fewer rivals than the county figure suggests.
The 20-plus-staff column tells you how many big operators exist. A trade with many large names, such as restaurants, plumbing and air conditioning, needs pages and reviews that look as organized as theirs.
A growing trade means more competition for the same searches next year, so start the work earlier. A shrinking one means the remaining competitors may be bigger, so lean on a narrow niche and a strong Maps profile.
Owner questions
The reading is part of the planning in every plan. RankGuarantee™ landing pages are $495 a month, and Organic Growth is $1,495 (Silver), $2,495 (Gold with a managed website) and $3,495 (Platinum). Paid ads management starts at $895 a month for one platform, with ad spend separate. No setup fee and no contract.
The closest is general automotive repair for a tire shop, and beauty salons for a groomer. Neither row is exact. Use the nearest row as a rough guide and ask us to look at your competitors in your zones directly, which is a better test than any county table.
No. The crowd is real, with 3,160 locations, but most offices are small and many are not marketing well. A firm that picks a specific practice area and a zone can still compete. Paid search often helps early in a crowded lane while the organic pages take time.
They are the latest full County Business Patterns release, and trade crowding changes slowly. They are a good guide to how a county compares with others and how fast a trade is changing, but not to who opened last month. We check live search results in your zones as the second half of the reading.
The Census table does not say. Housing growth, storm repair and an older housing stock may all play a part, and more people might also be registering as employer businesses. Treat the growth as a sign of more competition for the same searches, not as a promise of more customers.
Only roughly. Permits show how many new homes were authorized county-wide, not which zone gets them. For a roofer, plumber or landscaper, new-home areas and older neighborhoods are different markets and should have different pages and ads. Your own call history by address is a better guide to where to advertise.
The table covers all of Harris County, so it hides differences between rings. A trade that looks thin may be crowded inside the Loop and thin in the outer ring. We combine the table with the zone list and with live search results to find the ring where your trade has room.
No. County Business Patterns counts employer locations in Harris County, so sole proprietors and many one-person shops are missing, especially in trades such as landscaping, remodeling and cleaning. The real crowd is larger than the table shows, which is one more reason to pick a zone and a niche early.
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Get in Touch
Tell us your trade, your ring of the county and how many people work for you, and we will read the table for your situation and suggest where to start. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.