North Carolina Industries

North Carolina (NC) shows 16,920,734 workers employed across 1,114,165 business establishments, covering 1068 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 North Carolina is Health Care and Social Assistance with 641,503 workers — a signal about what kind of labor market and supplier ecosystem the state actually supports.

Beyond the top employer, Retail Trade (535,341) and Accommodation and Food Services (477,208) 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 (Finance and Insurance) pays $289,250/yr per employee, while the lowest-paying (Information) pays $15,308/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 North Carolina requires combining this state page with the national industry page. Click any industry in the table below to drop into a North Carolina-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.