Sumter County, SC has 2.1× more landscaping and lawn-care businesses per resident than the national average.
Sumter County, SC already has 24 with employees and 382 without — 406 landscaping and lawn-care services in total, 38.9 per 10,000 residents against 18.2 nationally. That's 2.1× more than average, so this category is well covered here (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
Sumter County, SC already has plenty of these. There is no shortfall to measure, so there is no figure to print.
Businesses per 10,000 residents · national rate = 100% · axis 0–200%
This column is off the top of the axis. Sumter County, SC has 2.1× more than the national rate for this category, which is past where this plot stops drawing.
The shaded band is the range Scoutway treats as ordinary. A county inside it is average, and the difference from the national rate is not an argument in either direction.
US Census County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023 · NAICS 561730. This counts how many of these businesses there are — not how many people want one. Ask around before you spend anything.
- In Sumter County
- 406
- Per 10k residents
- 38.9
- National rate
- 18.2
- Ratio
- 2.1× more than average
Population 104,410. Ranked 34 of 43 South Carolina counties with enough landscaping & lawn care 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.
Sumter County, SC has 124 more landscaping and lawn-care services than in 2017 — 282 then, 406 now, up 44%. Nationally the count grew 32% 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 124 could be 124 new businesses — or 132 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 561730 covers landscaping services: lawn maintenance and mowing, planting, tree and shrub work, and landscape design and installation.
The blind spot: The code mixes large landscape-installation firms in with routine mowing. A county can have several big design-and-build landscapers and still be short of anyone who will simply cut a lawn every two weeks.
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 Sumter County without something specific that the 406already 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 406 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
That's Sumter County. Now check your own town — free, no account.
Check your own town — free, no account
Or get one signal in your inbox every week — no account needed.