How to Get Industry Employment and Business Counts by Location (Census Bureau County Business Patterns API)

If you need to answer questions like "How many restaurants are in each California ZIP code?" or "Which counties have the most construction firms?" or "What's the total healthcare payroll in Texas?" -- the Census Bureau already has that data. It is called County Business Patterns (CBP), and it is one of the most useful datasets that almost nobody outside of economics and market research knows about. CBP covers every US state, county, and ZIP code. For each geographic unit, it reports the number of business establishments, total employees, and annual payroll -- broken down by NAICS industry code. The data comes from the Census Bureau's annual survey of businesses with paid employees. What the data contains Each record includes: naicsCode and naicsLabel -- the industry classification (e.g., "72" = Accommodation & Food Services, "54" = Professional, Scientific & Technical Services) employees -- total employees counted during the mid-March pay period establishments -- number of business est