Top growing small businesses in California
Which small-business types are adding jobs fastest in California right now, ranked from official BLS employment data. Free, updated every quarter, with a JSON API.
Ranking · California · 2026 Q1
Ranked by the change in jobs compared with the same quarter one year earlier. Rows marked n/a are suppressed by BLS for confidentiality.
| # | Business type | Jobs YoY | Locations YoY | Locations | Jobs | Avg weekly wage | Startup range | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Food trucks & mobile food NAICS 722330 | +8.6% | +8.3% | 1,373 | 5,475 | $622 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 2 | Gyms & fitness studios NAICS 713940 | +5.7% | +6.5% | 6,234 | 91,949 | $507 | $30,000–$200,000 | Analyze → |
| 3 | Nail salons NAICS 812113 | +5.7% | +6.5% | 7,296 | 40,190 | $427 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 4 | Coffee shops & cafés NAICS 722515 | +5.1% | +6.6% | 14,247 | 161,605 | $590 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 5 | Child day care NAICS 624410 | +1.7% | +3.9% | 9,755 | 86,166 | $794 | $30,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 6 | Dry cleaning & laundry NAICS 812320 | +1.3% | +0.8% | 1,856 | 11,439 | $733 | $25,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 7 | Hair & beauty salons NAICS 812112 | +0.7% | +3.1% | 8,648 | 30,127 | $737 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 8 | Quick-service restaurants NAICS 722513 | +0.6% | +2.6% | 35,009 | 554,137 | $598 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 9 | Auto repair shops NAICS 811111 | +0.1% | +2.9% | 10,508 | 45,224 | $1,223 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 10 | Cleaning & janitorial NAICS 561720 | -0.3% | +4.4% | 8,462 | 113,137 | $767 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 11 | Bars & taverns NAICS 722410 | -0.5% | +2.0% | 3,127 | 32,621 | $588 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 12 | Full-service restaurants NAICS 722511 | -0.8% | +2.7% | 31,270 | 593,188 | $718 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 13 | Landscaping services NAICS 561730 | -1.4% | +5.2% | 10,297 | 103,362 | $1,041 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 14 | Pet care & grooming NAICS 812910 | -1.5% | +3.3% | 2,923 | 18,387 | $747 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
Every state
Growth is local. The same business type can be booming in one state and shrinking in the next.
Methodology
- Source. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), private-sector rows, 6-digit NAICS. QCEW is a near-complete count from unemployment-insurance filings, not a survey.
- Period. 2026 Q1, the latest quarter BLS has published. Each figure is compared with the same quarter a year earlier, using BLS's own over-the-year change fields.
- Ranking. By year-over-year change in month-three employment. Ties and suppressed values sort to the bottom.
- Business types. 14 consumer-facing industries that first-time entrepreneurs commonly open. The set is fixed so rankings are comparable across states.
- Startup range. Neur's planning range for the industry category, the same figures used by the Financial pillar of a Neur report. See the methodology.
- Refresh. Data is re-fetched from BLS daily and changes when a new quarter is released (about five months after the quarter ends).
- Caveats. Growth in jobs is not the same as room for a new entrant; a fast-growing type can also be getting crowded. Use a Neur report to check competition and demographics for a specific city.
Free JSON API
The full dataset is available as JSON with CORS enabled. No key required. Please cache responses for at least an hour.
| Endpoint | Returns |
|---|---|
GET /api/data/top-businesses | National ranking plus all 50 states |
GET /api/data/top-businesses?state=texas | One state (slug is the lowercase state name, hyphenated) |
Fields per row: naics, label, establishments, employment, avgWeeklyWage, employmentChangePct, establishmentsChangePct, wageChangePct, startupCost. Top level: period, source, generatedAt.
Using this data
You may reproduce these figures with attribution. Please link to this page as the source: https://www.neur.co/data/top-businesses/california. Screenshots of the table are welcome; a link back is what lets us keep the feed free.