Businesses in Tampa: 91,335 workplaces, the biggest employers and 18 public headquarters

This page is for anyone who needs to find, size or vet businesses in Tampa Bay: companies looking for local suppliers or partners, job seekers, researchers and B2B sellers planning a territory. It covers how many businesses there are and where, who employs the most people, the public companies headquartered in the metro, the registries for checking any business, and a worked prospecting example.

How many businesses are in Tampa

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts business locations with paid employees. For the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metro Area (CBSA 45300) in 2023:

In bands: 80,087 establishments (87.7%) have 1 to 19 employees, 9,223 have 20 to 99 and 2,025 have 100 or more. CBP counts locations, not companies, so a bank with 40 branches counts 40 times; it leaves out self-employed people with no staff, and it measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023. Hillsborough's workplaces are the largest, at 16.2 employees each, against 13.1 in Pinellas and 10.3 in Pasco.

Tampa's largest employers

The City of Tampa publishes a principal employers schedule in its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. The fiscal 2025 report lists these ten, taken from the Tampa Bay Business Journal's Book of Lists 2025-2026:

The report notes that these are regional or county counts, not counts inside the city limits, so they aren't comparable with its 2016 column, when Hillsborough County Schools topped the list with 26,195. Health care dominates: four of the ten are hospital systems, with 79,040 employees between them. Publix is the largest employer in the region but isn't a Tampa company; its 10-K gives its head office as Lakeland, in Polk County, outside the metro.

The public companies headquartered in Tampa Bay

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest annual report on Form 10-K, with the head office from the report's cover page:

Raymond James reported total revenues of $15.91 billion; its net revenues, after interest expense, are the figure it leads with. Primo Brands' 10-K lists Tampa and Stamford as dual headquarters. MarineMax has agreed to be acquired by affiliates of Safe Harbor Marinas, a Blackstone Infrastructure portfolio company; its stockholders vote on 11 November 2026, according to its proxy statement. The largest workforces are at Bloomin' Brands (about 64,000 team members), Crown (about 23,000), Raymond James (about 19,500 associates) and Mosaic (13,249). Jabil's 10-K for 2026 doesn't give a total headcount.

The Tampa Bay Economic Development Council's 2026 Community Overview names Jabil, Raymond James, Crown Holdings and Mosaic as the region's Fortune 500 headquarters.

Who you might expect, and why they aren't listed

What Tampa businesses do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. Finance and insurance stands out: it has 6.2% of the metro's establishments but 8.9% of its jobs and 18 of its 85 workplaces with 1,000 or more employees, close to health care's 21. That's the back-office and operations side of the region, from Raymond James and Citigroup to the insurers in the table above. Professional services is the opposite shape: 10,641 of its 13,859 establishments have fewer than five employees.

Finding and checking a Tampa business

To vet a local supplier, confirm its Sunbiz record is active, check the license its trade needs on the DBPR search, and ask for two references from companies your size. For Florida-wide figures, see companies in Florida.

Prospecting Tampa Bay's professional firms

Professional services firms are the largest group of Tampa businesses and among the easiest to reach: owners and office managers make most buying decisions in firms under 100 people. The CBP detail for the metro shows how many have enough staff to need outside help with IT, HR or benefits.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Bayline IT (baylineit.example) runs managed IT and security for professional firms and wants Tampa Bay law, accounting and engineering firms with 10 to 99 employees.

• Law offices (NAICS 5411): 197 + 107 + 31 = 335 establishments.
• Accounting and bookkeeping (5412): 111 + 50 + 11 = 172.
• Architecture and engineering (5413): 129 + 141 + 41 = 311.
• That's 818 establishments. Bayline assumes 60% still run IT in-house or with a single contractor: about 490 prospects.
• At a 3% win rate in year one and $3,500 a month per client, that's about 15 clients and $630,000 in annual recurring revenue.

It targets managing partners and office administrators, and times outreach to cyber insurance renewals, when carriers ask for multi-factor authentication and backup evidence. Working out which of 818 firms still manage IT themselves, and who signs off, is the research Bebop does for each account.

Subject: [Firm]'s cyber insurance questionnaire

Hi [first name],

Most Tampa Bay firms your size now get a security questionnaire with their cyber insurance renewal, and the answers decide the premium.

We run IT and security for 40-person professional firms across Hillsborough and Pinellas, and we fill in that questionnaire with you each year. Could I send the checklist we use, so you can see where [Firm] stands before renewal?

[Your name], Bayline IT

Next step: turn a market like this into a working list with how to build a prospect list.