Androscoggin County, ME has 1.2× fewer cleaning and janitorial businesses per resident than the national average.
Androscoggin County, ME has 40 with employees and 267 without — 307 janitorial and cleaning services in total, 26.8 per 10,000 residents against a national rate of 32.7. That's 1.2× fewer than average (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Androscoggin County
- 40
- Per 10k residents
- 26.8
- National rate
- 32.7
- Ratio
- 1.2× fewer than average
Population 114,477. Ranked 6 of 16 Maine counties with enough cleaning services data to compare — 1 = fewest per resident.
Sources: US Census County Business Patterns ↗ (businesses with employees) and Nonemployer Statistics ↗ (sole proprietors). Every figure here is the two added together.
Androscoggin County, ME has 114 more janitorial and cleaning services than in 2017 — 193 then, 307 now, up 59%. Nationally the count grew 42% over the same years.
What this doesn't tell you: Census counts how many exist each year, not how many opened or closed. A rise of 114 could be 114 new businesses — or 122 openings and 8 closures. A year Census suppressed for this county is left out rather than counted as zero.
Series runs 2017–2023. Earlier vintages exist but are not comparable: Census changed which small counties it publishes after 2016, so including them would show counties losing an industry that never left.
Census code 561720 covers janitorial and cleaning services — everything from commercial office-cleaning contractors to residential house-cleaning companies, counted as one industry.
The blind spot: This code is dominated by commercial janitorial contractors cleaning offices on contract, which is a different business from cleaning houses. A high count can mean the county has plenty of office cleaners and very few residential ones.
What this doesn't tell you: A low count can mean an opening — or that there's less local demand for it. This counts how many businesses exist, including sole proprietors, but not how many customers want one. Treat it as a lead to check, not a verdict.
County Business Patterns counts only establishments with paid employees, which is why this page adds Nonemployer Statistics — the sole operators with no payroll, who are the majority in most of these trades. Both are counted above, and both are on census.gov if you want to check them.
Fewer of these per resident than the country average is a reason to look, not a reason to start. The two explanations the data cannot separate are “nobody has served this yet” and “there is less to serve here” — a county with few pool services may simply have few pools. The next step is not a business plan, it is ten phone calls to people in Androscoggin County who would pay for it.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 40 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
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