NAICS code for general contractors: the six 236 codes and how to pick yours

This page is for general contractors, builders and construction managers filling in a code on SAM.gov, a loan, bonding or insurance application or a vendor portal, and for sellers building a list of them. Trade and heavy civil contractors should start with the NAICS codes for construction overview.

The six general contractor codes

NAICS puts general contractors in subsector 236, Construction of Buildings. The Census Bureau's definition says these establishments are responsible for the building and may subcontract part or all of the work, usually to specialty trade contractors, so a contractor that subcontracts every trade still belongs here. The type of building separates the six codes.

Every definition except 236117's names design-build and construction management firms as members, so a construction manager uses the 236 code for the building type it manages, not a consulting code. Employees per establishment is our calculation from County Business Patterns.

How to choose: rules for the edge cases

1. Classify by building type, then by revenue. Take the code for the building type that earned the most revenue last year and list the others as secondary codes. SBA judges a firm's primary industry the same way, from how receipts, employees and costs split in the latest fiscal year.
2. New versus remodel only matters for housing. Homes split into new (236115, 236116) and remodeling (236118). Remodeling an office or a factory stays in 236220 or 236210.
3. Ask who owns the land. Build on land you own or control and sell the home with the lot, and you're a for-sale builder (236117).

The Census cross-references and index settle the cases people most often get wrong:

The Census index puts handyman construction service under 236118 for homes and 236220 for commercial buildings; the handyman code page covers repair-only cases.

SIC codes for general contractors, and for contractors in general

In the 1987 SIC manual, construction is Division C: Major Group 15 for building general contractors and operative builders, 16 for heavy construction and 17 for special trades. The Census concordances map the general contractor codes like this:

So the SIC code for a general contractor is 1542 for commercial work, 1521 for houses and 1531 for a builder selling its own product. Other contractors use 1611 for highways and streets (237310), 1623 for water, sewer, pipeline and power lines (237110, 237120, 237130), 1711 for plumbing and HVAC (mainly 238220), 1731 for electrical work (238210) or 1761 for roofing and siding (238160, 238170, 238390). SIC 1799, special trades not elsewhere classified, scatters across 13 NAICS codes, and SIC 8741, where older records put construction managers, now splits across ten 236 and 237 codes plus office administration. Mappings run many to many, so check each code in the NAICS to SIC converter.

How many general contractors there are

County Business Patterns 2023 counts 254,630 establishments in subsector 236, employing 1,621,439 people with an annual payroll of $133.7 billion, about $82,430 per employee (our calculation). Residential and nonresidential builders look like different industries:

Nonresidential builders are a fifth as numerous but have more establishments with 20 or more employees (7,916 against 6,676) and more payroll ($69.3 billion against $64.4 billion). The top states for commercial and institutional building (236220) are California (4,373 establishments), Texas (3,649), Florida (2,827), New York (2,123) and Pennsylvania (1,497). For remodelers (236118) they're California (16,792), New York (13,427), Florida (10,287), Texas (6,224) and Illinois (6,209).

CBP counts locations with paid employees, not companies, and leaves out owner-operators with no staff. It uses NAICS 2017 codes; none of the six changed in 2022.

SBA size standard and federal spending

The SBA size standard is $45.0 million in average annual receipts for all six codes, in the table effective 17 March 2023, which was still the current version in the eCFR on 28 October 2026. Receipts are averaged over your last five completed fiscal years, affiliates included.

Federal contract obligations under the 236 codes, from USAspending.gov:

In fiscal 2025 the largest buyers across the six codes were the Department of Defense ($18.16 billion), Homeland Security ($5.88 billion), Veterans Affairs ($2.81 billion) and GSA ($1.35 billion). Homeland Security's total was up from less than $0.5 billion the year before.

Where the code is used, and what a wrong one costs

• Federal bids. The contracting officer gives each solicitation one NAICS code and size standard, for the principal purpose of the work. A code appeal must be filed within 10 calendar days of the solicitation or amendment that set it, and misstating your size carries penalties under 13 CFR 121.108.
• Tax returns. Schedule C shortens these codes to 236100 (residential building) and 236200 (nonresidential building).
• Lenders, sureties and insurers. They benchmark you against your code. A remodeler that gives 236220 gets compared with commercial builders averaging 16.4 employees, not its real peers.

Finding general contractors by code

EDGAR lists public builders by SIC: 1531 operative builders, plus two SEC group codes the 1987 manual lacks, 1540 nonresidential and 1520 residential building contractors. The SEC code describes the whole registrant and doesn't always match the NAICS code the work would get:

Most general contractors are private. State licensing boards, building permit records and USAspending recipient lists for 236220 name active firms; the list of construction companies shows where to get each. Bebop can search by description, such as commercial builders with 20 to 99 employees that do healthcare work in one state.

Worked example

Illustrative example. The company and its figures are invented; the size standard is SBA's.

Cedar Row Builders (cedarrow.example) is a design-build firm. Last year it earned $6.2 million fitting out medical offices, $3.1 million building custom homes on clients' lots and $0.9 million from a house it built and sold on its own lot: $10.2 million in all.

1. Primary code. Medical offices are 60.8% of revenue ($6.2 million of $10.2 million), so the primary code is 236220. Custom homes (30.4%) add 236115 and the spec house (8.8%) 236117.
2. SIC for the bank. The lender's form asks for one SIC code. 236220 comes from SIC 1542 for this kind of work, so Cedar Row gives 1542.
3. Size. Its five-year receipts average $8.4 million, far under the $45.0 million standard for all three codes, so it can bid small business set-asides under each.
4. Federal targets. Medical work is its strength, so it searches USAspending for Veterans Affairs awards under 236220 in its state.

Next step: see how many contractors there are by trade and where to get their names in the list of construction companies.