NAICS 238Subsector · 3-digitlocal market7 market records

Specialty trade contractors

This subsector comprises establishments primarily engaged in trade activities generally needed in the construction of buildings and structures, such as masonry, painting, or electrical work. The work performed may include new work, additions, alterations, maintenance, and repairs. Specialty trade contractors usually work under contract to general contractors or operative builders to carry out a component of an overall project. However, they may contract directly with the owner of the property, especially in renovation and repair construction. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA
100,227
with employees
Under 10 employeesA
81%
most common size: 1–4
Establishments · USA
510,803
Employment · USA
4,773,221
9.3 per establishment
Payroll · USA
$322.5B
$68k per employee
01

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–461,00761%
5–920,42520%
10–1910,35110%
20–495,7786%
50–991,7662%
100–1996601%
200–4992130%
500+270%

Of 100,227 Canadian establishments with employees, 81% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario35,24235%
Quebec21,26721%
British Columbia17,79218%
Alberta13,78814%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA
Construction, US · opened 2020
83.2%
1 year
68.2%
3 years
56.5%
5 years
42.6%
10 years
opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

02

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 238, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionlow capitalUNVERIFIED

The most enterable corner of construction: a licence, a truck and a trade. Service and repair work prices better and is steadier than new-build subcontracting, and owners retiring without successors make acquisition a real path.

Who sets the price
General contractors on new work; the contractor itself on service and repair.
The software it runs on
Field-service management — dispatch, quoting, invoicing, payments. The most contested vertical software category there is.
03

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 238220
Mechanical Trades Business AcquisitionOne thing must be true
binding constraint: entry cost

The 'buy a boring business' thesis found this industry several years ago and repriced it: private-equity platforms and search funds now bid for the same HVAC and plumbing books, and multiples that were three to four times earnings are commonly five to eight. The buyer must also be the operator — technicians follow the owner, and licensing sits with individuals — so an absentee acquisition is the failure mode. The contractor software market at this code is a full study; this record is the operating business beneath it.

NAICS 2382204 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →
Operating businessScreenedfiled at 2383
Building Finishing ContractingExecution decides
binding constraint: defensibility

Drywall, painting, flooring and tiling are the trades with the lowest entry cost in construction, which is exactly the problem: a crew and a truck is the whole barrier, so pricing is competitive to the point of being cyclical labour arbitrage. The general contractor holds the relationship and re-tenders it. Scale helps only through the ability to staff several sites at once, which is a recruiting business rather than a trade one.

NAICS 23834 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →
Operating businessScreenedfiled at 238910
Excavation & Site PreparationStructure decides
binding constraint: capital intensity

Iron is the business: an excavator, a truck and a float before the first invoice, financed at rates that assume utilisation nobody can promise a new entrant. Work arrives through general contractors who already have a preferred sub, and volume tracks housing starts — the cycle that is currently softening in the same markets where rents are falling.

NAICS 2389105 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →
04

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Cross-industry softwareScreened
FSM — Field Service ManagementOne thing must be true
binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability
Incumbent ServiceTitan (Nasdaq: TTAN) for SMB and mid-market trades; Salesforce Field Service, ServiceNow FSM, IFS and PTC ServiceMax at the enterprise end

FSM is the horizontal dispatch layer under every business that sends workers to a site — booking the job, scheduling and routing the crew, the work order on the technician's phone, the quote, the invoice and the payment. It spans the specialty trades (the 238 anchor), appliance and equipment repair, cleaning, pest and pool routes, security patrol, land-survey and GIS field crews, and utility and telecom field forces. The neighbouring records — roofing (238160), electrical (238210), mechanical (238220), cleaning (561722), pest (561710), pool (561799), security guard (561612) and geospatial (541370) — are the vertical specialisations of this same layer; this record is the layer itself, and it does not repeat their vendor work. Incumbent vulnerability decides it: there is no weak incumbent anywhere in the stack. At the SMB and mid-market trades end, ServiceTitan (Nasdaq: TTAN) reported FY2026 revenue (year ended 2026-01-31) of $961.0M, up 24%, platform revenue of $925.4M, $82.1B of gross transaction volume invoiced through it, about 10,800 active customers, net dollar retention above 110% and gross dollar retention above 95%, and passed a $1B annualised run rate [A]. That is a leader still compounding, not one coasting. At the enterprise end, Salesforce Field Service and ServiceNow FSM ride inside CRM and ITSM estates the buyer already owns [C], IFS (which also owns WorkWave) passed €1B of ARR and was valued at over €15B in April 2025 [B], and PTC paid about $1.46B for ServiceMax in January 2023 [B]. Between those ends the challengers are funded, not starved: Jobber (Edmonton) $176M [B], Housecall Pro $125M in one 2022 round [B], simPRO over $350M from K1 [B], BuildOps $127M at a $1B valuation in March 2025 [B], ServiceTrade $85M [B], Workiz about $60M [B]. The private-equity roll-ups — EverCommerce (Service Fusion, Kickserv), Xplor (FieldEdge), IFS/WorkWave — have already bought most of the independent long tail. Demand is not the problem; the price of reaching the buyer is. Every owner-operator plumber, cleaner and patrol company is already being sold to by a well-funded vendor with a payments line attached, so an entrant pays the same paid-search and trade-show toll without the installed base that makes the payments margin work. The only defensible positions are vertical — a workflow the generalists do badly (commercial service agreements and inspections, which is exactly where ServiceTrade and BuildOps went; regulated reporting; survey and utility crews tied to GIS) — and those belong on the vertical records, not here. The 238 anchor is navigational: the buyer is any business with a dispatcher.

NAICS 23815 vendors named8 sourced figuresOpen →
Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 238160
Roofing Contractor SoftwareOne thing must be true
binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability
Incumbent JobNimbus and AccuLynx

Two funded incumbents plus aerial-measurement data licensing (EagleView) as a barrier. Insurance-claim workflow is the distinctive element and it is already the incumbents' core feature. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 2381603 vendors namedOpen →
Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 238210
Electrical Contractor SoftwareOne thing must be true
binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability
Incumbent ServiceTitan

Structurally identical to the mechanical trades study and served by the same incumbent. Rather than duplicate it, the service-agreement wedge identified in 238220 should be tested across both trades at once — electrical contractors run the same maintenance-agreement model. Sourced update: ServiceTitan closed FY2026 at $961M, +24%. Electrical contractors are served by the same platform as the mechanical trades studied at 238220, so this market has no incumbent of its own to attack.

NAICS 2382102 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →
Vertical softwareFull studyfiled at 238220
Mechanical Trades Contractor SoftwareEnter — narrow
Incumbent ServiceTitan (NASDAQ: TTAN)

The category leader has priced itself out of the bottom two-thirds of its own market — but >95% retention means the play is selling beside it, never instead of it.

NAICS 2382202 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →
05

Companies in this industry · 38

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

CompanyFiled underRevenueRank
EmcorNYSE:EMEPlumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors238220$17.0B1/4
Comfort Systems USANYSE:FIXPlumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors238220$9.1B2/4
ServiceTitanPrivateElectrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors238210$961M1/4
Badger Infrastructure SolutionsPrivateSite preparation contractors238910$832M1/7
Housecall ProPrivateElectrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors238210—2/4
FieldEdgePrivateElectrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors238210—3/4
CoperniqPrivateElectrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors238210—4/4
AccuLynxPrivateRoofing contractors238160—1/4
AeconPrivateSite preparation contractors238910—2/7
Bird ConstructionTSX:BDTSite preparation contractors238910—3/7
BuildOpsPrivateSpecialty trade contractors238—1/17
Conduit TechPrivatePlumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors238220—3/4
DrillbitPrivateSpecialty trade contractors238—2/17
FieldPulsePrivateSpecialty trade contractors238—3/17
FieldwirePrivateSpecialty trade contractors238—4/17

And 23 more on the companies page.

06

Who works here

The occupations employed in Construction, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Tagged to this industry

Concentrated in this sectorA

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 81% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

07

Inside this industry

4 rows sit directly beneath 238, and 43 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Alongside it, under 23 Construction