NAICS 23832Industry · 5-digitlocal market

Painting and wall covering contractors

SoftwareFSM — Field Service Management 238

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in painting, paperhanging and decorating in buildings and painting heavy (engineering) structures. Paint or paper stripping, including sandblasting when it is an incidental part of surface preparation by paint and wall covering contractors, is included in this industry. The work performed may include new work, additions, alterations, maintenance, and repairs. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 5,879
Under 10 employeesA: 88%
Establishments · USA: 37,963
Employment · USA: 197,707
Payroll · USA: $10.5B

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

1–44,03469%

5–91,15120%

10–194397%

20–492023%

50–99441%

100–19970%

200–49920%

500+0—

Of 5,879 Canadian establishments with employees, 88% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario1,93933%

British Columbia1,38123%

Quebec1,02017%

Alberta90215%

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.

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 capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 238 Specialty trade contractors

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.

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.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 2383 Building finishing contractors covers it.

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 →

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.

Sold across the wider branch

Cross-industry softwareScreenedfiled at 238 Specialty trade contractors

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 →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

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.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Concrete finishers, tilesetters and plasterers One industry 94.3%

Bricklayers and insulators One industry 87.5%

Trades helpers and labourers One industry 80.7%

Carpenters and cabinetmakers One industry 79.9%

Plumbers, pipefitters and gas fitters One industry 79.8%

Roofers, glaziers, painters, decorators and floor covering installers One industry 73.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical industrial, electrical and construction trades and related workers One industry 70.5%

Technical electrical trades and electrical power line and telecommunications workers Mostly one sector 60%

Managers in construction and facility operation and maintenance Mostly one sector 57.7%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 48.9%

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

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 24.7%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 14.4%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 12.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 10.4%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 7.4%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.4%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 6.7%

Other technical trades Across the economy 6.1%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 5.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 4.3%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 88% 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 →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 23832. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
238320	Painting and wall covering contractors	5,879	screened at 2383

Alongside it, under 2383 Building finishing contractors

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
23831	Drywall and insulation contractors	4,542	screened at 2383
23833	Flooring contractors	3,149	screened at 2383
23834	Tile and terrazzo contractors	1,603	screened at 2383
23835	Finish carpentry contractors	6,659	screened at 2383
23839	Other building finishing contractors	4,351	screened at 2383