North Carolina Industry Benchmarks

North Carolina (NC) shows 4,036,587 workers employed across 243,972 business establishments, covering 985 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 Restaurants and Other Eating Places with 395,007 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 (395,007) and Limited-Service Restaurants (185,475) 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 (Investment Banking and Securities Dealing) pays $289,250/yr per employee, while the lowest-paying (Motion Picture Theaters (except Drive-Ins)) 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.