Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services ·NAICS 54133

NAICS 54133 · IRS SOI 2023 · Census CBP

Engineering Services - Industry Benchmarks

$109,949/yr average annual pay, with 1,870 SBA loans on record for NAICS 54133.

14.0%
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector margin
1.3M
Workers employed
$109,949/yr
Avg payroll / employee
$1.1B
SBA lending, FY20–26

Data updated July 2026

The verdict · NAICS 54133

California leads Engineering Services activity nationally. IRS SOI doesn't publish margin data at this NAICS level, but the broader Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector runs a 14.0% net margin.

14.0%
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector margin (IRS SOI)
1.3M
Workers employed (Census CBP)
$109,949/yr
Avg payroll / employee
$1.1B
SBA lending, FY20–26

Benchmarking Insights for Engineering Services

Engineering Services sits inside Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, a sector that runs a 14.0% net margin overall.

63,233 establishments employ 1,260,577 workers (19.9/location) at $109,949/yr average annual pay. California leads employment, followed by Texas and Florida.

Employment

1,260,577

Total employees (Census CBP)

Avg Payroll / Employee

$109,949/yr

Annual compensation

Establishments

63,233

Business locations

Release-over-release change

What changed from Census CBP 2022 to 2023

Employment increased by 60,942; establishment count increased by 643. This comparison uses two published national Census County Business Patterns releases; suppressed fields are omitted rather than estimated.

Workforce scale

Financial Detail

Annual Payroll (Total)
$138.6B
Avg Employees per Establishment
19.9

Sub-Industries

Industry Profit Margin
Engineering Services

NAICS 541330

N/A

Top States by Employment

State Employment
California 142,591
Texas 125,756
Florida 76,849
Virginia 73,170
Pennsylvania 48,394
New York 45,972
Maryland 45,021
Colorado 40,828
Massachusetts 36,174
Illinois 35,017

Showing top 10 of 51 states

SBA Lending Activity

SBA FY2020–2026

SBA Loans Approved

1,870

Total Loan Volume

$1.1B

Avg Loan Size

$606K

Jobs Supported

24,542

Program Breakdown

7(a) 1,607 (86%)
504 263 (14%)

Top SBA Lender

The Huntington National Bank

99 loans in this industry

New Business Share

16.3% of borrowers were new/startup businesses

Annual Lending Trend (7 yrs)

2020
243
2021
302
2022
255
2023
276
2024
347
2025
387
2026
60

Frequently Asked Questions

How profitable is Engineering Services?
IRS SOI doesn't publish margin data at the NAICS 54133 level. California leads this industry nationally. The broader Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector runs a 14.0% net margin (IRS SOI 2023).
How many businesses are in Engineering Services?
63,233 business establishments. Together they employ 1,260,577 workers.
What is the average payroll per employee in Engineering Services?
$109,949/yr average annual pay per employee. Businesses average 19.9 employees per establishment.
Which states have the most Engineering Services employment?
California leads with 142,591 workers. Texas (125,756) and Florida (76,849) round out the top three.
How much SBA lending does Engineering Services receive?
Engineering Services businesses received 1,870 SBA loans totaling $1.1 billion between FY2020 and FY2026. The average loan size was $606K. These loans supported 24,542 jobs at origination. Most lending (86%) came through the SBA 7(a) program.

Comparable industry benchmarks

These links are calculated from the current national dataset. They are comparison paths, not recommendations or evidence that businesses operate alike.

How this ranks: Its Census employment total exceeds 97% of that same 551-industry cohort. Calculated by ranking this industry's reported value against every other industry at the same NAICS digit-level, not the whole dataset: comparing a 6-digit detail industry to a 2-digit sector would mix incompatible scales.

Closest workforce scale

Same NAICS detail level, ordered by the smallest difference in reported Census employment.

Benchmarking Engineering Services

Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.

Sources: IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) Business Tax Statistics · Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023

NAICS 54133 · Data year: 2023

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which released its 2023 County Business Patterns dataset in June 2025, PlainBizBench benchmarks 2,002 U.S. industries against Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income data. See our methodology for the full compilation process.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns / SUSB Industry employment scale, payroll, and firm-size benchmarks · 2023

Every figure on PlainBizBench is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page aggregates profit-margin, payroll, entity-type, and SBA-lending benchmarks for this industry, live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.

Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.