With 2.44 million residents, Pittsburgh, PA ranks 26th among the 387 metropolitan areas. This page lays out the income and housing picture and a trade-by-trade look at the competition.
The metropolitan statistical area is centered on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Housing: a median home value of $215,000, 35 percent below the national figure. On income, Pittsburgh, PA sits at $75,762 per household, 6 percent below the national figure. Read together, they frame the buying power of the market.
Who lives here matters as much as how many. 70.7% of homes are lived in by their owners, 6 points above the US share. The median age is 42.8, 3.9 years above the national median, so this is a older market than the country as a whole. The share of adults with a bachelor's or above is 38.2%, 2 points above the US share. The civilian labor force numbers 1,270,640 people with unemployment at 5%, about the same as the US share.
Against the state as a whole, the median income is 3 percent lower than the Pennsylvania figure, the median home value is 16 percent lower than the Pennsylvania figure, and the number of businesses per resident is 7 percent denser than the Pennsylvania figure; see the Pennsylvania page for the full figures.
How crowded is the market overall? Pittsburgh, PA has 61,628 employer establishments. That works out to 25.3 businesses per 1,000 residents, in line with the national figure (the national rate is 25 per 1,000). The home-services trades that most often advertise locally number 3,134 establishments, a 5.1% share, about the same as the US share.
| Trade (NAICS) | Count | Per 100,000 | Index vs US |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beauty salons | 1,063 | 43.6 | 1.71× |
| Personal care services (all) | 1,664 | 68.2 | 1.40× |
| Highway, street and bridge construction | 94 | 3.9 | 1.38× |
| General automotive repair | 806 | 33 | 1.29× |
| Physicians' offices | 2,071 | 84.9 | 1.29× |
| Other specialty trade contractors (paving, asphalt, fencing) | 385 | 15.8 | 1.22× |
| Landscaping services | 1,033 | 42.3 | 1.19× |
| Child day care services | 717 | 29.4 | 1.18× |
| Automobile dealers | 385 | 15.8 | 1.11× |
| Concrete foundation and structure contractors | 186 | 7.6 | 1.08× |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 843 | 34.6 | 1.03× |
| Dentists | 987 | 40.5 | 0.99× |
| Restaurants and other eating places | 4,404 | 180.5 | 0.97× |
| Legal services | 1,218 | 49.9 | 0.91× |
| Electrical contractors | 542 | 22.2 | 0.88× |
| Grocery and convenience retailers | 626 | 25.7 | 0.85× |
| Lessors of real estate (all) | 781 | 32 | 0.78× |
| Roofing contractors | 145 | 5.9 | 0.77× |
| Self-storage facilities | 86 | 3.5 | 0.63× |
| General freight trucking | 532 | 21.8 | 0.62× |
Reading the index: 1.00 matches the national mix, 1.50 means half again as common here, 0.50 half as common.
Pittsburgh, PA is dense with beauty salons, personal care services, road and paving contractors and general automotive repair compared with the US pattern. Beauty salons are the widest gap, 1,063 of them, 1.7 times the national share. By contrast general freight trucking, self-storage operators, roofing contractors and real estate lessors are comparatively scarce in Pittsburgh, PA. General freight trucking are the thinnest at 532, about 62% of the national share. Plumbing and HVAC contractors, electrical contractors and concrete contractors sit near their national proportions.
Per 100,000 residents: restaurants 180.5, followed by physicians' offices and personal care services. Restaurants (4,404), physicians' offices (2,071) and personal care services (1,664) are the biggest categories by establishment count. By sector, automotive businesses are the most over-represented at 1.2 times the US share; trucking, storage, real estate and road construction are the least, at about 72% of.
In the crowded trades (beauty salons, personal care services and road and paving contractors) 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. For general freight trucking, self-storage operators and roofing contractors, the opportunity is coverage. Few competitors means the business that shows up for every nearby town and every variant of the search collects most of it. High homeownership (70.7%) means a large pool of people who pay for their own repairs, replacements and yard work, which favors the home-services trades in this market. A median age 3.9 years above the national median means a larger share of customers who still start with a Google search and read reviews before calling, so the search-plus-reviews stack earns its keep.
Matched to the data: the services most likely to earn their cost in Pittsburgh, PA.
A website that loads fast, states the offer and gets the visitor to the phone.
Content for the site, planned around what people search.
Display and retargeting across the sites people in Pittsburgh, PA read.
Campaigns on Google fenced to the service area and judged on booked work.
Management of the Google listing that decides the map pack.
Organic visibility for the searches that do not need an ad to win.
A short call, a free audit of your current listing and site, and a plan built on what actually competes in this market.
Data: US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimates and County Business Patterns 2023.