California Industry Benchmarks

California (CA) shows 16,336,816 workers employed across 1,028,210 business establishments, covering 1312 industries tracked by the Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023 program. That single-state footprint is a starting point for anyone benchmarking location strategy, evaluating a market for expansion, or simply understanding where jobs concentrate. The single largest employer-industry in California is Restaurants and Other Eating Places with 1,404,974 workers, a signal about what kind of labor market and supplier ecosystem the state actually supports.

Beyond the top employer, Restaurants and Other Eating Places (1,404,974) and Employment Services (1,053,799) fill out the top three, giving you a quick read on the state's economic base. Payroll dispersion is just as important as headcount: the highest-paying tracked industry (Portfolio Management) pays $333,891/yr per employee, while the lowest-paying (Skiing Facilities) pays $19,045/yr. That gap tells you how the state's median wage is being pulled up or down by its industry composition, critical context for anyone comparing cost of labor across markets.

Census CBP data does not include profit margins (that comes from IRS Statistics of Income at the national level only), so a full benchmark on any specific NAICS code in California requires combining this state page with the national industry page. Click any industry in the table below to drop into a California-specific NAICS view showing employment, establishments, annual payroll, and average compensation for that exact combination, then cross-reference the national page for profitability, entity structure, and SBA lending activity in the same industry.