Where are contractors scarce vs. abundant?

An establishment in BLS QCEW is a single physical business location classified into a construction NAICS industry — building (236), heavy and civil engineering (237), or specialty trade (238). It is a count of business locations, not a headcount of individual contractors or tradespeople: a contracting company that runs three offices counts as three establishments, and a one-person shop counts as one. It is also distinct from a state's licensed-contractor count and from ProFix's listing count. We say "contractors" in the headline the way a homeowner would — but the honest unit is the establishment, and we repeat that wherever a number appears.

Per-capita density is a market-structure signal, not a quality score or a measure of your odds of finding a good pro. A higher rate means more construction business locations per resident — a rough proxy for choice and competition. A lower rate often means the work is concentrated in fewer, larger, multi-site firms, or that the population simply grew faster than the firm count. Neither tells you whether any individual contractor is licensed, insured, bonded, or good. Those are separate signals ProFix tracks per contractor against official state licensing-board records — see how many contractors we can verify.

• Numerator. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), 2024 annual averages — private construction establishments in NAICS 236 (building), 237 (heavy/civil), and 238 (specialty trade). These are the BLS-published statewide totals (agglvl-55), not a re-sum of county rows, so they are immune to partial-county truncation. Public-domain U.S. government data (17 U.S.C. 105).
• Denominator. U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates (NST-EST2024-POP, resident population July 1, 2024) — the resident population on July 1, 2024, embedded as a 51-row cited constant sourced to census.gov. This is the authoritative state-population source our earlier absolute-count study deliberately omitted for lack of a clean denominator.
• The rate. Establishments ÷ population × 100,000, to one decimal. The national rate (275.9) is the BLS national establishment total over the summed jurisdiction population — a population-weighted mean, which is why it sits inside the per-state spread rather than at the average of the rows.
• An establishment is a business location, not a contractor. A multi-site firm counts more than once; a sole proprietor counts once. This is not a licensed-individual headcount, not a state licensed-contractor count, and not a ProFix listing count.
• Density is market structure, not quality. A higher per-capita rate means more firms competing per resident (more choice). It says nothing about whether any contractor is licensed, insured, or good — separate signals ProFix tracks per contractor.
• Aggregate only. Both inputs are state totals. There is no contractor name, license number, phone, or address anywhere in this study — nothing that attributes anything to a named business.
• Computed live. Every number is read from the committed BLS seed and divided by the embedded Census constant at render time. If the seed is rebuilt for a newer QCEW year, this page updates automatically — no value here is hardcoded.