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Exterior & Building Services · Wood County, WV

Wood County, WV has 1.9× fewer building-exterior service businesses per resident than the national average.

Wood County, WV has 3 with employees and 15 without — 18 building-exterior services (pressure washing, gutters, pools) in total, 2.2 per 10,000 residents against a national rate of 4.1. That's 1.9× fewer than average (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).

The measurementUS Census 2023
In Wood County
3
Per 10k residents
2.2
National rate
4.1
Ratio
1.9× fewer than average

Population 82,947. Ranked 2 of 4 West Virginia 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.

What this number is

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.

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.

How to read thisOpinion

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 Wood County who would pay for it.

Businesses counted under this category

Census counts these as one industry, so the 3 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.

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