Queens County Business Landscape: Which Trades Crowd the Borough

County Business Patterns for 2022 count 50,822 employer locations in Queens County with 579,883 employees, spread across a borough with 2,360,826 residents in the Census survey. The numbers leave out sole proprietors, drivers and gig workers, so the real count of people selling something is higher, but employer locations are the businesses that compete for the same searches, and that makes them the right measure for marketing.

Among the sectors that employ people, health care and social assistance is the largest at 18.1 percent of workers, followed by retail, accommodation and food, and education. Transportation and warehousing, which holds the airports, is fifth. A 2018 state comptroller release cited in the place brief said Queens County held 96 percent of New York City's air transportation jobs in 2017, which is why airport work matters here more than in most counties.

The most crowded field in Queens County is residential remodeling, with 2,030 locations, 9.0 per 10,000 residents, about 2.9 times a typical county. Beauty salons follow at 2.3 times, then physician offices at 1.5, dentists at 1.5, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors at 1.3, restaurants at 1.3 and electrical contractors at 1.2. In these trades, a business gets noticed by being specific about neighborhood, language, specialty and hours.

At the other end, landscaping (148 locations) and roofing (44) sit at about a fifth of a typical county's density, which fits a borough of attached houses and apartment buildings. Insurance agencies and accounting firms are also below the typical level. A roofer or landscaper in Queens County faces fewer direct rivals, so showing up in Maps and in a few well-chosen search results can go further than in a crowded trade, though the pool of buyers is smaller.

Residential remodeling in Queens County grew 23.6 percent, from 1,642 locations in 2017 to 2,030. Janitorial services grew 11.4 percent, beauty salons 9.6, insurance agencies 8.7, real estate agents 7.6 and electrical contractors 5.5. Growth means newer competitors, newer websites and more ads in the same auctions, so the first mover advantage is gone.

Physician offices in Queens County fell 12.1 percent, from 1,605 to 1,410, restaurants 4.9, auto repair 4.3 and accountants 1.8. A shrinking count can mean consolidation, so the businesses left behind may be larger, better funded and more active in search. We read these numbers as a signal about pace, not about demand, since location counts say little about revenue.

Permits for new homes rose from 4,087 in 2021 to 7,931 in 2023, then fell to 3,395 in 2025. A rise in new units brings plumbers, electricians, remodelers, movers and cleaners the first jobs in a building. A fall slows that flow, so marketing shifts toward existing homes, repairs and upgrades.

New buildings also matter for property services such as janitorial work, which grew 11.4 percent. New buildings need cleaning, security and maintenance contracts, and the buyers are managers who search by building type and neighborhood.

Three facts from the place brief explain a lot of local demand. Health care is the largest private employer, with about 203,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026 on the borough's economic dashboard. JFK and LaGuardia together employed 49,000 people in 2017, according to the same state comptroller release. And a 20 billion dollar redevelopment of JFK is under way, overseen by an advisory council that the Borough President co-chairs.

For a marketer these are customer clusters. Hospitals and clinics bring patients, visitors and shift workers into Jamaica, Elmhurst, Astoria and Flushing, while the airports bring travelers, crews and suppliers into the southeast and the north shore. Businesses that sit near them should say so on their pages, in their Maps listings and in their ads, with hours that match the schedules of the people they want to reach.

The table matters because it tells you which game you are playing. In a crowded trade, we write neighborhood pages, build reviews and use Google Ads with tight location targeting. In a thin trade, we aim to own the few queries that exist and use Maps to fill the gap. In a growing trade, we move faster, because newcomers keep arriving. In a shrinking one, we study who remains and defend the customers you have.

The same trade reads differently in different parts of the map, so we pair this landscape with the Queens County coverage map. A remodeler in Flushing and one in Howard Beach face the same Queens County numbers but different neighborhoods, languages and storm risks.