Economic Development - Business & Industries

Much of the following business and industry information is collected through EDD reports, which do not include sole proprietors (i.e. businesses with no employees other than the owner and home occupations). Business license data collected by the City, which include sole proprietors, suggest that the official wage and salary and employee counts understate actual City employment by several thousand. In addition, there are an unknown number of workers in the City whose jobs are not listed on employment records.

Table 3:1 illustrates the average number of businesses along with average payroll by industry type for the year 2007. The table provides a good overview of the cross-section of businesses found in Santa Monica.

Table 3.1: Average Number of Businesses in Santa Monica 2007
Type of Industry	# of Establishments	Annual Average Payroll
Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services	1,217	$256,175,134
Health Care & Social Assistance	843	$101,125,080
Retail Trade	648	$112,080,677
Information	619	$234,776,420
Arts, Entertainment, & Recreation	600	$42,143,039
Real Estate & Rental & Leasing	392	$51,415,737
Accommodation & Food Services	377	$66,609,058
Other Services	362	$27,885,204
Finance & Insurance	258	$100,620,158
Admin & Support & Waste Mgmt & Remediation	230	$31,354,896
Wholesale Trade	230	$35,144,978
Construction	227	$35,679,586
Manufacturing	105	$13,516,724
Educational Services	85	$23,924,416
Local Govt	49	$85,708,994
Transportation & Warehousing	29	$3,575,353
Management Of Companies And Enterprises	22	$12,558,853
Non-Classified	2	n/a
Utilities	6	$5,062,895
Federal Govt	6	$4,141,268
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting	6	$109,331
Non-Classified	2	n/a
State Govt	1	$77,764
Mining	1	n/a
Total	6,315	$1,243,704,915
Source: EDD Labor Market, 2007 Second Quarter NAICS Sector Data

The table above does not include business licenses issued for rental of residential property (in home licenses), business licenses issued for rental of commercial property, businesses where the only "employee" is the owner, including most home offices, or business licenses for contractors outside the City which must obtain a business license by virtue of their doing business within the City. It counts each professional office as a single unit, and does not reflect the number of professionals within it who must also obtain a license. The numbers of business licenses may ultimately equal three times the number of employers.

In renewing their 2005-2006 business licenses, 14,753 Santa Monica-based licensed businesses declared total 2004 gross receipts of $ 8,483,036,193.

Size of Businesses

Although there are some businesses in Santa Monica with large numbers of employees, most of the City’s businesses are small. EDD data for 2004 indicate that, among businesses with non-farm wage and salary employees (i.e., not including sole proprietors), the average size of such businesses in the City is thirteen employees and the median is eight employees. The U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns (which include sole proprietors) reports that as of 2002, nearly two-thirds of Santa Monica business had between one and four employees, another 15.8% had between five and nine employees, and nearly all (98.5%) businesses had less than 100 employees, as shown in Table 3.2

Businesses in Santa Monica:

Size of Businesses

Principal Employers