Metro overview, all trades
Home-service contractors in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metro area has 5,761 home-service contractors across 11 trades, or 29.61 per 10,000 residents.
The largest trade here is other home service, with 3,301 records and 57.3% of the metro’s home-service total; the smallest with any record at all is pool, with 66.
No trade in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara runs meaningfully ahead of California’s own rate per resident for that trade. It carries fewer pool, pest control, plumbing contractors than the state average.
Among the 19 California metro areas this site carries, ranked by records per ten thousand residents in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's largest trades: it is 10th of 19 for other home service, around the middle; it is 12th of 19 for landscaping, around the middle; and it is 13th of 19 for flooring, around the middle. The field is the metro areas this site publishes rather than every one in California.
The facts for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara
- Home-service contractors in this metro
- 5,761
- Per 10,000 residents
- 29.61 per 10,000
- Trades with at least one record
- 11 of 11
- Records first appearing in the last 12 months
- 165
- Records flagged closed in the last 12 months
- 50
- Independent, franchise, corporate
- 5,576 independent, 60 franchise brand, 106 corporate owned, 19 awaiting chain review
- Active licenses with no public listing
- 3,365
- Universe quality
- 0.64% of source records merged as duplicates, 2.24% carry no street address
Sources and dates: Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026. Population 1,945,767, Census Bureau Vintage 2023 population estimates, as of July 1, 2023. State license files, as of September 2, 2026.
Row definitions: methodology page.
What these numbers say about San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara
Other home service is San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's largest trade, and more than half of every record this site holds here sits in it. It holds more than three times as many records as landscaping, the next largest.
In order, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's four largest trades are other home service, landscaping, flooring and plumbing. Other home service alone reaches half of every record on this page.
All eleven trades carry at least one record in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara. The smallest of them here is pool.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's three smallest trades are pool, pest control and roofing. Between them they still hold a workable share of the metro.
Every trade in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara clears the record floor a trade page has to meet, so each has a page of its own. That is a statement about how thick this metro's thinnest trade is.
Per resident, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara sits close to the California rate, so the counts here read as ordinary for the state.
Painting takes a larger share of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara than of California, which is the clearest way this metro's mix departs from its state's.
Pool is thinner in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara than across California, the mirror of the lean above.
Read per resident, the top of the table does not move: other home service, landscaping and flooring are San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's three densest trades, and pool its thinnest.
Of the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara trades with a measured licensed share, painting links to an active state licence most often and pool least often. That spread measures how well two files join here, not whether either row's businesses hold a licence.
More trade-covering licences lapsed in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara over the last twelve months than were issued. A lapse is a licence that stopped being current, not a business that stopped trading. Both figures come from the state's own status field.
Almost every San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara record sits inside the state whose licence file its share is computed from, so that share covers nearly the whole metro.
A median hourly wage is published for plumbing, electrical, HVAC and roofing in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara. Of those, plumbing pays the most and roofing the least.
Cleaning, flooring, landscaping, other home service, painting, pest control and pool carry no wage figure for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, so those rows are blank rather than filled from a neighbouring occupation.
Electrical carries San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's largest published employment count: the occupational series counts 5,480 workers across the metro, and this site publishes 289 electrical records here. The two count different things, one an occupation across every employer and the other the businesses on this site, so they stand side by side rather than one against the other. Plumbing, HVAC and roofing follow it.
Of the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara records that are not independent, corporate-owned locations outnumber franchise brands and concentrate in pest control; the most franchised trade here is cleaning.
Within San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, painting and landscaping are the most independently held trades and pest control the least.
Almost none of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's records are waiting on chain review, so the independent, franchise and corporate counts here describe nearly the whole metro. Pool holds what little of that bucket the metro has.
Cleaning is the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara trade whose records most often carry no street address, and pest control the one whose records most often do. What a blank street line means is set out on the methodology page.
More San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara records first appeared over the last twelve months than were flagged closed, so the file for this metro grew. Pest control added the largest share of new records and pool lost the largest share to closed flags.
The cities inside San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara that differ from the wider metro enough to carry pages of their own are Palo Alto, Gilroy, Milpitas and Los Gatos. Each of them carries one trade.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA sits inside California alone, so the labour market this page counts and the licensing regime that governs it are the same geography.
Ordered by population, the metro areas either side of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara on this site are Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin above it and Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk below it. Those are the metros closest to it in population.
Ordered by records per resident rather than population, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara's neighbours are Utica-Rome and New Orleans-Metairie. A metro can sit high on one of these orderings and low on the other.
Every trade in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara
| Trade | Contractors | Per 10,000 | Licensed share | Median hourly wage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning | 287 | 1.47 | Not published | |
| Electrical | 289 | 1.49 | 25.3% | $43.77 |
| Flooring | 324 | 1.67 | 9.6% | |
| HVAC | 310 | 1.59 | 21.0% | $39.45 |
| Landscaping | 353 | 1.81 | 18.1% | |
| Painting | 253 | 1.30 | 29.2% | |
| Pest control | 94 | 0.48 | Not published | |
| Plumbing | 321 | 1.65 | 21.8% | $51.71 |
| Pool | 66 | 0.34 | 9.1% | |
| Roofing | 163 | 0.84 | 25.8% | $36.85 |
| Other home service | 3,301 | 16.97 | Not published |
Wage occupations for this metro area: Electricians, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, Roofers. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 OEWS, published May 15, 2026.
All 11 trades here clear the 8-record floor, so no trade URL of this metro redirects here. The methodology page sets out what the floor is for.
Cities inside San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara with their own page
| City | Trades | Records covered |
|---|---|---|
| Palo Alto | other home service | 135 |
| Gilroy | other home service | 93 |
| Milpitas | other home service | 87 |
| Los Gatos | other home service | 86 |
The gate a city has to clear is on the methodology page.
Home-service contractors in California carries the boards and the consumer-protection route for this metro’s first-named state.