Home to 2.18 million people, Columbus, OH is the 32nd-largest of the 387 US metropolitan areas. Households, home values, education, business density, and which trades are already crowded, all from Census data.
This is the Columbus metropolitan area in Ohio.
Households here bring in a median of $81,945, in line with the national figure. The median home is worth $300,800, 10 percent below the national figure, which shapes what homeowners will spend on repairs and upgrades. For a business that sells to homeowners, that combination sets the ceiling on what a job is worth.
Education: 39.8% with a bachelor's or higher, 4 points above the US share. Columbus, OH has a median age of 36.7 (2.2 years below the national median). Unemployment 4.1%, 1 points below the US share. Ownership: 61.3% of households own their home, 4 points below the US share.
Set against the state as a whole (Ohio), household income here is 15 percent higher than the Ohio figure, the median home value is 40 percent higher than the Ohio figure, and the business base per resident is about the same as the Ohio figure.
46,419 businesses with employees operate in Columbus, OH. Set against the population that is 21.3 per 1,000 residents, 15 percent below the national figure, against 25 nationally. Of those, 1,936 are home-services contractors (plumbing and HVAC, electrical, roofing, concrete, specialty trades and landscaping), a 4.2% share of the business base, about the same as the US share. The table breaks out the categories that spend the most on local advertising; restaurants is the biggest of them at 3,777.
| Trade (NAICS) | Count | Per 100,000 | Index vs US |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants and other eating places | 3,777 | 173.6 | 1.10× |
| Physicians' offices | 1,117 | 51.3 | 0.92× |
| Legal services | 954 | 43.8 | 0.95× |
| Lessors of real estate (all) | 875 | 40.2 | 1.15× |
| Dentists | 801 | 36.8 | 1.06× |
| Personal care services (all) | 759 | 34.9 | 0.85× |
| General freight trucking | 726 | 33.4 | 1.12× |
| Child day care services | 700 | 32.2 | 1.53× |
| Landscaping services | 622 | 28.6 | 0.95× |
| Grocery and convenience retailers | 592 | 27.2 | 1.07× |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 456 | 21 | 0.74× |
| Beauty salons | 434 | 19.9 | 0.93× |
| General automotive repair | 418 | 19.2 | 0.89× |
| Electrical contractors | 363 | 16.7 | 0.78× |
| Automobile dealers | 286 | 13.1 | 1.09× |
| Other specialty trade contractors (paving, asphalt, fencing) | 211 | 9.7 | 0.89× |
| Roofing contractors | 161 | 7.4 | 1.14× |
| Concrete foundation and structure contractors | 123 | 5.7 | 0.95× |
| Self-storage facilities | 102 | 4.7 | 0.99× |
| Highway, street and bridge construction | 45 | 2.1 | 0.88× |
Ratio above 1.00: the trade holds a bigger share of the local business base than it does nationally; below 1.00, a smaller one.
Relative to the national mix, child day care services and real estate lessors take up an outsized slice of the Columbus, OH business base. Child day care services are the widest gap, 700 of them, 1.5 times the national share. On the other side, plumbing and HVAC contractors, electrical contractors and personal care services are thin: fewer establishments per resident than the US pattern. With 456 locations, plumbing and HVAC contractors sit at about 74% of the national share. Roofing contractors, concrete contractors and specialty trade contractors track the US share closely.
Relative to population the leaders are restaurants (173.6 per 100,000 residents), physicians' offices and legal services. Counted by establishments, the order is restaurants (3,777), physicians' offices (1,117), legal services (954). The group picture: trucking, storage, real estate and road construction above the national pattern at about the same as, the home-services trades below it at about the same as.
In the crowded trades (child day care services and real estate lessors) the map pack decides more calls than the ads do. Business Profile completeness, review volume and review recency become the separating factors, and paid search has to be tight rather than broad. Where the base is thin (plumbing and HVAC contractors, electrical contractors and personal care services), reach beats refinement: cover the service-plus-place searches across the whole area, because there are few competitors to split them with. Homeownership of 61.3% is below the national share, so a larger part of the housing stock is managed by landlords and property managers; for home-services trades that argues for a commercial and property-management pitch alongside the consumer one. Younger residents (median age 2.2 years below the national median) split their attention between search, social feeds and AI assistants, so the presence has to be in all three.
Matched to the data: the services most likely to earn their cost in Columbus, OH.
Listing management for the map results that most local searches start and end with.
Site structure, pages and citations that earn organic placement in Columbus, OH.
A site built to convert a local search into a phone call or a form.
Being the answer when people ask an AI assistant who to call in Columbus, OH.
Digital out-of-home placements along the routes people in Columbus, OH drive.
Campaigns on Google fenced to the service area and judged on booked work.
Columbus, OH has 2.18 million residents (US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimate), ranking 32nd of 387 metropolitan areas.
The median household income in Columbus, OH is $81,945 (ACS 2024 5-year), above the US median of $80,734.
The Census Bureau counts 46,419 employer establishments in Columbus, OH (County Business Patterns 2023), or 21.3 businesses per 1,000 residents.
The median home value in Columbus, OH is $300,800, and 61.3% of homes are owner-occupied (ACS 2024 5-year).
Measured against the US business mix (County Business Patterns 2023), child day care services and real estate lessors have more establishments per resident than the US average; plumbing and HVAC contractors, electrical contractors and personal care services have fewer in Columbus, OH.
Bring the trade and the towns you serve; we bring the numbers and a plan.
Data: US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimates and County Business Patterns 2023. Updated 2026-09-29.