Census CBP 2023 · NAICS 561730
How many landscaping companies are there in the US?
The biggest employer industry covered on this site by establishment count, and the biggest payroll.
- With employees117,969establishments
- Without employees516,572businesses
- Employees802,899in the employer half
- Annual payroll$41.2 billionemployer half
Landscaping is the one trade here where the employer side is genuinely large: 118,000 companies with staff, more than 800,000 employees, and a payroll over forty billion dollars a year. The nonemployer side is still four times bigger by business count.
Businesses with staff, and businesses without
These are two different federal surveys covering two different universes, and adding them together without saying so is the most common way this data gets misquoted. They are kept separate here on purpose.
| Measure | Employer | Nonemployer |
|---|---|---|
| Businesses | 117,969 | 516,572 |
| People employed | 802,899 | None, by definition |
| Average staff each | 6.8 | Zero |
| Payroll and receipts | $41.2 billion | $18.6 billion |
| Source | Census CBP 2023 | Census NES 2023 |
landscaping companies with employees are 1.411 per cent of all 8,361,342 US establishments with employees
The five states with the most landscaping companies
| State | Establishments with employees |
|---|---|
| Florida | 10,670 |
| California | 9,393 |
| New York | 7,725 |
| Texas | 5,568 |
| Pennsylvania | 5,179 |
Employer establishments only. The nonemployer side is not published by state at this level of detail, and in most of these trades it is the larger half, so treat this table as a ranking rather than a census of the trade.
Landscaping Services
Counted here
Landscape care and maintenance, lawn mowing, ornamental tree and shrub services, landscape installation, and lawn treatment.
Counted somewhere else
Landscape architecture and design without installation, which is 541320.
NAICS 561730 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about landscaping companies
The one trade in this dataset where the employer side is genuinely large, and the nonemployer side is still four times bigger.
Well over a hundred thousand companies with staff, more than eight hundred thousand employees, and a payroll over forty billion dollars a year, which is the largest employer payroll of any industry in this dataset. It accounts for well over one per cent of every American establishment with employees. Landscaping is a real industry rather than an aggregation of sole traders.
And yet the nonemployer count is still more than four times the employer count. What separates this trade from cleaning or barbering is the ratio rather than the pattern: the self employed half is still the larger half, just not by the order of magnitude the personal care trades show. Crews average under seven staff, so even the employer side is small businesses rather than large ones.
Landscape architecture and design without installation is a separate code and is not in this figure. That boundary matters for anybody comparing this count with a design led competitor, because the two businesses are counted in different industries even when they bid against each other.
A round is bought street by street, which is why this trade gets more from a suburb name in a caption than from any national audience. Spring is the harvest for before and after material and the advertising window opens before homeowners think about their gardens.
Every figure quoted above appears in the tables on this page or is arithmetic on them. Nothing here forecasts, values a business or suggests a price, because none of the three is measurable from a business count.
Where these numbers came from
Public domain US federal statistics, fetched by hand and baked into this site rather than called at build time. If you quote a figure from this page, cite the agency rather than this site, and use the wording below.
US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2023, United States, NAICS 561730 Landscaping Services. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts establishments with at least one paid employee, measured in the week of 12 March 2023. A business with no employees is counted by Nonemployer Statistics instead, not here.
US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics, 2023, United States, NAICS 561730. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts businesses with no paid employees and at least $1,000 in annual receipts. Sole traders, single-van operators and self-employed contractors land here.
What these workers are paid
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How many landscaping companies are there in the US?
- Census County Business Patterns counted 117,969 landscaping companies with at least one paid employee in 2023, employing 802,899 people on a payroll of $41.2 billion. Nonemployer Statistics counted a further 516,572 businesses with no employees, turning over $18.6 billion. NAICS code 561730.
- Why are there two different numbers?
- Because they measure two different universes. County Business Patterns counts establishments with at least one paid employee. Nonemployer Statistics counts businesses with no employees and at least a thousand dollars of annual receipts. Together they cover every US business, and adding them without saying so would be misleading, so this page keeps them apart.
- What else is inside this code?
- Landscape care and maintenance, lawn mowing, ornamental tree and shrub services, landscape installation, and lawn treatment. What it excludes: landscape architecture and design without installation, which is 541320.
- What does this count tell somebody running one of these businesses?
- The one trade in this dataset where the employer side is genuinely large, and the nonemployer side is still four times bigger. A round is bought street by street, which is why this trade gets more from a suburb name in a caption than from any national audience. Spring is the harvest for before and after material and the advertising window opens before homeowners think about their gardens.
- How current is this?
- 2023 is the most recent County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics release published by the Census Bureau. Both were fetched and baked into this site on 1 August 2026. This page makes no live API call.
Numbers persuade nobody. The pair does.
Every trade on this page sells the same way: a photograph of the problem beside a photograph of the result. Take the two, and Before and After Video Maker turns them into a 1080p video, a looping GIF or a still.