Businesses in West Virginia: 35,839 workplaces, 167,960 registered firms and where new ones are forming

This page is for people looking for West Virginia businesses: suppliers and buyers, job seekers, economic developers and B2B sellers who need to know which counties are worth a trip. It covers the Census workplace count, the Secretary of State's registration statistics by county, the industries, the public companies headquartered in the state, and how to turn the state's own records into a prospect list.

The Census count: 35,839 workplaces

County Business Patterns (CBP) counts business locations with at least one paid employee. For West Virginia in 2023, all industries:

In bands: 30,542 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 4,545 with 20 to 99 and 752 with 100 or more. CBP counts each location separately and leaves out businesses with no employees, which is why the registration count below is more than four times larger.

What the state registry shows

The West Virginia Secretary of State's Business Statistics Database reports, for any date range, how many businesses were registered at the start, how many new ones registered and how many were active at the end. Its total excludes businesses that merged, were acquired, terminated or were administratively revoked during the period. For calendar 2025:

Out-of-state companies registered to do business in West Virginia are 28.0% of the total. The count has grown fast: at the end of 2019 it was 120,362, so active registrations are up 39.5% in six years. New registrations kept pace in 2026, with 17,198 in the first nine months.

"Growth" is the database's own measure: new registrations as a share of the businesses on record at the start of the year. Berkeley and Jefferson, the two Eastern Panhandle counties within reach of the Washington, DC area, added 2,240 new businesses between them in 2025, more than Kanawha, the state's largest county.

The Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics tell a similar story from tax records: 16,387 applications to start a business in West Virginia in 2025 (our sum of the monthly figures), up 64.6% from 9,955 in 2019.

Where the workplaces are, and what they do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. Health care is the defining fact: 139,754 jobs, a quarter of all CBP employment in the state, at 27.8 employees per site, and 205 health care establishments have 100 or more employees. Monongalia (Morgantown) and Cabell (Huntington), the two big university counties, have the largest workplaces of the eight. Mining is small in sites but not in pay: coal mining alone has 82 establishments and 13,109 employees averaging $109,109.

Public companies headquartered in West Virginia

These are the listed companies whose latest 10-K cover gives a West Virginia address. For the four banks, revenue is net interest income plus noninterest income from the 10-K (our calculation). The list is short because the state's largest employers are mostly hospital systems, universities and government, or operations owned by companies based elsewhere.

For named employers, WorkForce West Virginia publishes a Top Employers dashboard ranking the largest employers by workforce region and industry.

Where to find and check West Virginia businesses

The list service is the useful one for sellers. Its files are names and addresses only (registered officers, principals and agents included, but no phone numbers or email addresses), delivered as nine tilde-delimited files joined by a record ID.

Prospecting new businesses in the Eastern Panhandle

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

Panhandle Payroll (panhandlepayroll.example) runs payroll and bookkeeping for businesses with 2 to 50 employees. New businesses are its best prospects, because they choose a provider in their first year and rarely switch.

• New registrations in Berkeley and Jefferson counties in 2025: 1,369 + 871 = 2,240.
• Bought as one list from the Secretary of State, all 2,240 would cost about $25 + 2,240 × $0.05 = $137.
• It drops out-of-state filers, holding companies and real estate LLCs, and assumes 25% are operating businesses likely to hire: about 560.
• A monthly refresh adds roughly 190 more (2,240 ÷ 12) before filtering.

It writes to the owner within 60 days of registration, before the first payroll, and leads with state withholding and unemployment registration, the step most new employers get wrong. Telling an operating business from a holding LLC, and finding the owner's work email, is what Bebop researches for each name on the list.

Subject: Your first payroll at [Company]

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on registering [Company] in [county] County. If you're hiring this year, the first payroll is where most new West Virginia employers run into trouble: state withholding, unemployment registration and the federal deposits all start at once.

We set up payroll and bookkeeping for Panhandle businesses with 2 to 50 people, and we handle the state registrations for you. Want a one-page checklist for your first hire?

[Your name], Panhandle Payroll

Next step: to turn these county counts into a ranked list of accounts, read how to build a prospect list.