US Economic Census — Chemical Manufacturing (NAICS 325)

US Economic Census — Chemical Manufacturing (NAICS 325) is the five-yearly head-count of the entire American chemical industry, and it is the denominator under every market-sizing model in the Specialty Chemicals vertical. The 2022 edition measures the sector at 14,961 establishments, 888,737 employees and $901.0 billion in sales, value of shipments, or revenue — up from 13,571 establishments and roughly $735.9 billion in 2017, a five-year expansion of 10.2% in plant count and 22.4% in shipments (not adjusted for price changes).

What makes the census unusually powerful is its resolution. Every statistic is published at each NAICS level simultaneously: sector 325 as a whole, three-digit subsectors like basic chemical manufacturing (3251, 2,783 establishments and $297.9 billion in shipments), and six-digit national industries such as petrochemical manufacturing (325110, just 60 establishments on a $77.6 billion market). Layered over that is full geographic drill-down — United States, states, metropolitan and micropolitan areas, counties — so a state-by-state map of chemical capacity or a county shortlist for site selection is a filter, not a separate research project. Get a sample of this dataset to see real rows with their complete field dictionary.

Four rows straight from the 2022 census, all United States totals, one per NAICS level — they show how quickly the sector narrows from the whole industry to a single six-digit product market:

US ECONOMIC CENSUS 2022 — NAICS 325 CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING, UNITED STATES
| NAICS2022 | NAICS2022_LABEL             | ESTAB  | RCPTOT     | EMP    |
| --------- | --------------------------- | ------ | ---------- | ------ |
| 325       | Chemical manufacturing       | 14,961 | 900972532  | 888737 |
| 3251      | Basic chemical manufacturing | 2,783  | 297894043  | 162840 |
| 325110    | Petrochemical manufacturing  | 60     | 77557794   | 10829  |
| 325120    | Industrial gas manufacturing | 661    | 16411762   | 14626  |

The texture rewards attention. RCPTOT arrives in thousands of dollars, so the sector row reads 900,972,532 — $901.0 billion once you rescale. The petrochemical row shows an economy of scale the headline number hides: sixty establishments carrying $77.6 billion in shipments, about $1.29 billion per site against roughly $60 million per establishment across the sector as a whole. And industrial gas manufacturing runs the other way — 661 plants on $16.4 billion, closer to $24.8 million each — because gases are produced near their customers rather than shipped across continents.

Twelve core columns define every row, and together they form a complete profit-and-loss sketch of each NAICS-by-geography cell: establishment and firm counts on the structure side, shipments and value added on the output side, payroll and materials cost on the input side, inventories to bridge them.

The dictionary extends past these twelve — first-quarter payroll, end-of-year inventories and the companion concentration-ratio tables sit in the additional fields available on request tier, mapped onto the same definitions.

• Geography: the United States, every state, plus metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas and counties — the same statistics repeated at each level, so drill-downs never require a second file.
• Temporal: reference year 2022, the latest edition of a survey conducted every five years covering years ending in 2 and 7; the prior edition is 2017, which is what makes the 10.2% establishment growth and 22.4% shipment growth measurable.
• Granularity: one row per geography × NAICS industry combination, from two-digit sector down to six-digit national industry — roughly 3,600 cells for NAICS 325 across all geographies, spanning 14,961 establishments nationwide.

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Ranked by relevance scores from Datadory's persona research:

1. Market researchers & consultants — size any chemical segment from the authoritative frame: $901.0 billion at the sector level, $77.6 billion in petrochemicals alone, sliced by state, metro or county without stitching sources together.
2. Strategy & corporate-development teams — read competitive structure before writing a thesis; top-four concentration near 74.2% in petrochemical manufacturing against about 24.7% in medicinal and botanical manufacturing tells you which markets consolidate and which stay fragmented.
3. Investors & quants — anchor sector models on a benchmark measured every five years on a constant NAICS frame, then track the same cells forward between editions.
4. Developers & data-product builders — wire establishment counts, shipments and payroll into dashboards as clean numeric columns keyed on NAICS code and geography, with suppressed cells flagged rather than silently zero-filled.

Notes and adjacent reading:

• EPA TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory — 70,774 substances listed in US commerce; the regulatory universe above the industrial economy this page measures.
• vs EPA TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory — where the substance list and the market census meet and diverge, side by side.
• BLS Producer Price Index — Industrial Gas Manufacturing (PCU325120) — monthly price movement for a six-digit slice this census prices only once every five years.
• OECD eChemPortal — federated hazard records for roughly 800,000 substances across 34 government databases.
• Kaggle — 426k PubChem Molecules for LogP Prediction — computed molecular descriptors for the formulation side of the industry.

Browse the whole vertical on the Specialty Chemicals industry hub, the ranked best specialty chemicals datasets shortlist, or the market-sizing use case this dataset anchors. Background reading: Economic Census, NAICS classification, value of shipments and establishment counts.