Size a local market and its competition

Someone asks how big the market is, or whether an area is underserved, and you need an answer that survives a follow-up question.

Who this is for

Written for Consultants, franchise operators, service businesses. You bring the commercial question; the published record behind it comes back with the answer, and you can see where each figure came from.

What to bring

Have these to hand before you paste the prompt. Anything you leave out should be asked for rather than guessed at.

The industry, as a description or a NAICS code
The geography, ideally more than one for comparison

Try this prompt

Paste this where you connected HARBOR Port and replace the bracketed parts. It asks for sources and periods on purpose: that is what makes the answer checkable.

For [industry] in [geographies], compare employer establishments, employment and payroll, and nonemployer businesses where they are published. Explain which count measures what, identify where the numbers look thin relative to the surrounding areas, and do not call anywhere underserved unless the data actually supports that.

Then ask a narrower question. These are the ones people ask next.

How has the establishment count moved over the last few published years, and is that movement bigger than the sampling noise.

What would I need to know about demand that these counts cannot tell me.

What the answer looks like

The shape below is the point of the workflow. If a response arrives without the periods and the source behind each number, ask for them before you use it.

Establishment, employment and payroll figures per geography, with the vintage
Nonemployer counts shown separately and labelled
Where the industry sits relative to nearby areas
An explicit list of what the counts cannot establish about demand

Limits to keep in view

Employer establishments and nonemployer businesses are different populations. They are never added together, and a page that shows both names each one.

Census, BEA and BLS series are published on different calendars and for different periods. Every figure carries the period and geography that were actually returned, not the one that was asked for.

Not answered by this data:

Your revenue, customers, bookings, pipeline or churn
Inventory, capacity, staffing rosters or payroll
Your actual utility bills, fuel spend or supplier quotes
Business credit, insurance premiums, or lending decisions
Permit, licence or certification status
A local forecast, a hazard estimate, or a legal opinion

Where the numbers come from

The answer is built from the published sources below. Each one keeps its own geography, period and definitions, and the answer states which was used.

Census County Business Patterns
Census Economic Census
Census Nonemployer Statistics
Census Business Dynamics Statistics

The exact names, and where to read the detail

census

census_cbp_market_size_by_naics_county
census_cbp_market_size_by_naics_state
census_economic_census_pull
census_nonemployer_stats
census_business_dynamics_stats

Scoped to what your plan reaches, and to the sources each workflow names. Reviewing the catalogue first is the cheap way to decide whether this covers your question: source catalogue.