Sonoma County, CA has 1.3× more building-exterior service businesses per resident than the national average.
Sonoma County, CA already has 57 with employees and 201 without — 258 building-exterior services (pressure washing, gutters, pools) in total, 5.3 per 10,000 residents against 4.1 nationally. That's 1.3× more than average, so this category is well covered here (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Sonoma County
- 57
- Per 10k residents
- 5.3
- National rate
- 4.1
- Ratio
- 1.3× more than average
Population 483,366. Ranked 33 of 43 California counties with enough exterior & building 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.
Sonoma County, CA has 73 more building-exterior services (pressure washing, gutters, pools) than in 2017 — 185 then, 258 now, up 39%. Nationally the count grew 48% 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 73 could be 73 new businesses — or 81 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 561790 is “Other Services to Buildings and Dwellings” — a catch-all for building and dwelling services that have no code of their own. Pressure washing, gutter cleaning, pool service, bin cleaning and holiday lighting all land here, but so do chimney sweeping, duct cleaning and drain cleaning.
The blind spot: This is the coarsest code on the site, and it is a leftovers bucket rather than a category. It cannot tell a gutter cleaner from a pool cleaner from a pressure washer — and it also counts interior trades like chimney sweeps and duct cleaners that none of the businesses here compete with. A county can look well covered on the strength of firms doing work you would never do.
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.
There are more of these per resident here than in the country at large. That is a genuine argument against starting one in Sonoma County without something specific that the 57already operating do not have. It is not fatal — a crowded category can still have a bad-service niche — but “there is room” is not the argument available to you here, and any tool that tells you otherwise is guessing.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 57 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
- •Driveway, patio & house-siding pressure washing
- •Seasonal gutter cleaning with a twice-a-year plan
- •Curbside trash-bin cleaning on a monthly subscription
- •Holiday light install & takedown (a few intense weeks)
- •Recurring pool cleaning & maintenance route
- •Exterior-cleaning company (windows + pressure + gutters) with a crew
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