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5.0 Rating on GoogleBefore the table
The Census counted 16,936 business locations with paid staff in Jefferson County in 2022, employing 332,945 people. Those are totals for the whole county; the survey does not say which suburb a location is in, so a count of law offices describes Birmingham, Hoover and Homewood together. Locations without paid employees, such as a lone contractor with no staff, fall outside the survey, so the real number of competitors is higher than any figure below, most of all in trades with many small shops.
Two comparisons make the counts easier to read. The first is density: locations per 10,000 residents set against the typical county, defined as the median county with 20,000 or more people. The second is size: how many locations have fewer than 10 staff and how many have 20 or more. A trade with many tiny locations is crowded in a different way from a trade with a few big ones.
The fifteen trades
| Trade | Locations in 2022 | Per 10,000 people | Multiple of the typical county | Tiny shops, per 100 | Locations with 20+ staff | Gain or loss since 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential remodelers | 166 | 2.5 | 0.8 times | 90 in 100 | 6 | +48.2 percent |
| Roofing contractors | 32 | 0.5 | 0.6 times | 75 in 100 | 5 | +14.3 percent |
| Electrical contractors | 147 | 2.2 | 1.0 times | 69 in 100 | 33 | +18.5 percent |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 216 | 3.3 | 1.0 times | 66 in 100 | 48 | +3.3 percent |
| Insurance agencies and brokerages | 346 | 5.2 | 1.4 times | 88 in 100 | 15 | -1.4 percent |
| Real estate agents and brokers | 272 | 4.1 | 1.5 times | 94 in 100 | 6 | +43.2 percent |
| Law offices | 568 | 8.6 | 2.9 times | 85 in 100 | 44 | -2.1 percent |
| Accounting and CPA firms | 140 | 2.1 | 1.5 times | 79 in 100 | 16 | -7.3 percent |
| Janitorial services | 92 | 1.4 | 0.8 times | 64 in 100 | 22 | -7.1 percent |
| Landscaping services | 179 | 2.7 | 0.8 times | 79 in 100 | 11 | +17.0 percent |
| Physicians offices | 497 | 7.5 | 1.8 times | 58 in 100 | 124 | -8.0 percent |
| Dentists | 257 | 3.9 | 1.4 times | 72 in 100 | 15 | -6.9 percent |
| Full-service restaurants | 413 | 6.2 | 0.9 times | 29 in 100 | 201 | +3.0 percent |
| General automotive repair | 149 | 2.2 | 0.9 times | 85 in 100 | 5 | -2.0 percent |
| Beauty salons | 152 | 2.3 | 1.2 times | 86 in 100 | 5 | +6.3 percent |
Source: Census County Business Patterns 2022 and 2017, locations with paid staff. The benchmark is the median county with 20,000 or more residents. Survey years, not live counts.
The crowded end
Law offices lead the table by a wide margin. There are 568 locations, 8.6 per 10,000 residents and 2.9 times the typical county, though the count slipped 2.1 percent from 580 in 2017. Two courthouses and a county seat may be part of the reason, but the survey does not say. Physician offices come next at 497 locations, 1.8 times the typical county, and they have 124 locations with 20 or more staff, the second largest group of big employers in the table. The count fell 8.0 percent from 540 in 2017, though a count of locations cannot show whether practices closed or combined.
Accounting firms (1.5 times typical), real estate agents (1.5 times), insurance agencies (1.4 times) and dentists (1.4 times) round out the crowded group. For these trades a general page loses to a specific one, and paid ads usually cost more per click because the competition is thick. Our PPC management page explains when paying makes sense, and our SEO company page explains what to ask a provider.
Real estate is the odd one out. It is crowded at 272 locations and it is also growing fast, up 43.2 percent since 2017, with 94 of every 100 locations under 10 staff. That mix of many small shops and fast growth means a new agent faces a lot of competition, and a brand that explains the suburbs well has an edge.
Room to move
Roofing is the lightest trade in the table, with 32 locations and 0.6 times the typical density. Residential remodelers (0.8 times), landscaping (0.8 times), janitorial services (0.8 times) and auto repair (0.9 times) also sit below it. Light density does not mean easy: it can mean customers travel farther for the work, or that the shops are large and few. It does mean a business that explains itself well has fewer direct rivals to outrank.
The fast gainers were residential remodelers, up 48.2 percent from 112 to 166, real estate agents at 43.2 percent, electrical contractors at 18.5 percent, landscaping at 17.0 percent and roofing at 14.3 percent. The trades that shrank were physician offices, accounting firms, janitorial services and dentists, each down between 6.9 and 8.0 percent. A shrinking count can reward the businesses that remain, because the clients of the ones that left need somewhere to go.
Large restaurants stand apart: 413 locations, 29 of every 100 with under 10 staff and 201 with 20 or more, the biggest group of large locations in the table. Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning has 48 large locations too. Those are businesses where a company of size is competing against sole operators.
New homes
| Year | Homes authorized by permit |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 2,121 |
| 2022 | 2,617 |
| 2023 | 1,948 |
| 2024 | 2,117 |
| 2025 | 2,400 |
Source: Census Building Permits Survey, new private housing units authorized by permit. Authorization is not the same as completion.
Size mix
The tiny-shop column tells you who is likely deciding your marketing. In real estate, 94 of every 100 locations have fewer than 10 staff. The figure is 90 in 100 for remodelers, 88 in 100 insurance agencies, 86 in 100 beauty salons and 85 in 100 law offices and auto repair shops. In those trades the owner is usually the marketer, which makes a plain and affordable monthly plan more useful than a campaign that needs a committee.
At the other end, only 29 of every 100 restaurant locations are that small, and physician offices (58), plumbing, heating and air-conditioning (66) and janitorial services (64) also run larger. When a trade has many locations with 20 or more staff, a prospective customer is as likely to meet a front-desk team or a dispatcher as an owner, so the website and the call handling have to work without the owner in the room. A competitor of that size can also afford paid ads all year, which is one reason crowded, larger trades often need both organic pages and a paid channel. The SEO company page lists what to ask a provider who proposes either.
What to do with it
Build narrow pages: one practice area, one suburb, one question answered well. Use the Maps listing and reviews as your differentiator, and consider paid ads for the terms where the organic results are packed. Our local SEO page covers the listing.
Own the search for your trade in the suburbs you serve before a new entrant does. Organic pages and a complete Business Profile are likely the most efficient start, and storm and rain seasons give roofers and landscapers their calendar. The content marketing page covers it.
A growing count means new competitors keep arriving, so invest in assets that last: reviews, service pages, a strong site. The new homes in the permit table are where those households first look for help.
Questions
Reading it is not a billed service. The Jefferson County AL business landscape feeds into every plan we sell: RankGuarantee™ at $495 a month for 25 landing pages, Organic Growth Silver at $1,495, Gold at $2,495 and Platinum at $3,495 a month. Paid ads management is $895, $1,595 or $2,295 a month, ad spend separate, with no setup fee and no contract.
They come from the Census County Business Patterns for 2022 and 2017, plus the Building Permits Survey and the American Community Survey. They are snapshots from those years, not live counts, so use them to read the shape of the market and not today's exact number.
The survey does not say, so we will not guess at causes. Facts that may be related are two county courthouses and the presence of the state's largest hospital, but the table is a count and not an explanation. What it does tell you is that a firm in this trade competes with many others for the same searches, so a narrow practice area and a clear suburb are worth more than a general page.
No. It tells you the field is thick, so you should compete on specifics: a suburb, a practice area, a response time, a review count. A thick field also means demand exists. It is the thin field that should make an owner ask whether customers really want the service, and even there the answer is often yes.
The survey counts sites, not patients or staff. Practices can combine into fewer, larger locations and still see as many people, or they can close. The table cannot say which happened here, so read the drop as a change in the number of competing sites, not as a change in care.
Possibly. The table covers fifteen trades that Census reports at county level, and a niche such as pest control or pool service sits inside a wider category. If yours is not there, we use the closest category and the employment sector table on the lead generation page to describe the market, and we say plainly where the match is loose.
They show the pace of building across years, not months. New homes authorized from 2021 to 2025 ranged from 1,948 to 2,617 a year. Use them to judge whether your trade serves new households, and use the weather and event calendar for timing.
Not directly. The Census counts are county totals. To see crowding by suburb, we look at the Maps results and search results for your trade in each place, which the coverage map helps us organize. That comparison is a manual review at the start of a plan, and we repeat it when you add a zone.
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Get in Touch
Tell us your trade and the suburbs you serve, and we will read the numbers with you before you spend anything. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.