Management, Scientific & Technical Consulting
The industry — Management, scientific and technical consulting services
Base industry report for 5416 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 26,210
- Under 10 employeesA
- 90%
- Establishments · USA
- 215,682
- Employment · USA
- 1,625,072
- Payroll · USA
- $169.6B
Of 26,210 Canadian establishments with employees, 90% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Execution decidesThe hurdles here are ones a better operator clears. That is not a promise of success — it is the absence of a structural reason you cannot win.
Find something that compounds. Entry is achievable and so is the first customer; what is missing is a reason the next entrant cannot repeat it as easily as you did.
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.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 6
The binding constraint — defensibility
Cut because the same low barrier that lets you in lets everyone in, and no compounding asset accumulates. Noted as the destination for the AI-governance adjacency identified in the 541514 study — that idea belongs here and deserves its own screen. Sourced update: the only disclosed comparable at scale is Accenture at $69.7B, and it is a technology-services business wearing consulting's clothes. The houses that actually define management consulting are partnerships that publish nothing, which means an entrant cannot benchmark price, margin or share against anyone — the absence of data is itself part of why the category resists defensibility.
Reputation travels nationally and the buyer is usually a head-office function, so this is not a local market — but it is also barely a measurable one.
Handle — Accenture, as the only disclosed comparable. The category's defining firms are partnerships that publish nothing at all. Accenture's $69.7B is the only figure available at scale, and it describes a technology-services business rather than a strategy house — which means this industry cannot be sized from the outside, and the record says so instead of estimating it.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| AccentureNYSE: ACNA | $69.7B | — | FY2025 revenue — consulting and technology services together; also counted against the IT services screen at 5415, so not additive |
| McKinsey / Bain / BCGC | not disclosed | — | Private partnerships; no disclosure of any kind |
| FTI Consulting / CRA InternationalC | not disclosed | — | Listed but not researched for this record |
| Independent practitionersC | not disclosed | — | The long tail — unmeasured and unmeasurable |
Evidence
Evidence. Accenture's revenue on this record IS sourced (tier A). The rest of the category is structurally undisclosed — partnerships publish nothing — and the cut factor remains analyst judgment.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
members, per its About page ('2500+'); grants the Certified Management Consultant designation
The technical-consulting side: engineering consulting firms, founded 1925
US body for independent management consultants; posts current to Sept 2026