Construction companies in Minneapolis-St. Paul: 10,456 contractors, two state files and a power line cluster

This report is for homeowners and developers choosing a contractor in the Twin Cities, general contractors looking for subcontractors, people weighing a job or an acquisition, and B2B sellers whose customers are builders and trades. It covers the Census count, Minnesota's two contractor files, the public-project rules and Minneapolis permit data.

The Twin Cities market in one table

US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, construction sector (NAICS 23), Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area (CBSA 33460):

That average is about $18,000 higher than the $76,580 national construction figure, by our calculation from the CBP state files. Minnesota as a whole ranks third among states for construction pay, behind Alaska and Massachusetts.

Heavy civil: the power line cluster

Nationally, power and communication line contractors average 41 employees per establishment. In the Twin Cities they average 148, which means a handful of large line contractors run big crews out of the metro and work across the region. Heavy and civil construction as a whole (387 establishments) employs 19,604 people, slightly more than every builder of homes and commercial buildings combined (19,043). Two smaller heavy civil rows, oil and gas pipelines and "other" heavy civil, have employee totals the Census Bureau flags as high-noise, so they're not reported here.

Fifteen counties, two states

Anoka County has more establishments than Dakota or Ramsey but fewer employees: it's a county of small residential and trade firms. The metro also includes four smaller Minnesota counties (Chisago, Isanti, Le Sueur and Mille Lacs) and Pierce County, Wisconsin (89 establishments). Wisconsin contractors fall under Wisconsin's rules, not Minnesota's.

Size

That's 9,573 establishments (91.6%) with 1 to 19 employees, 737 with 20 to 99 and 146 with 100 or more. CBP counts locations with paid employees, not companies, and leaves out the self-employed; employment is for the pay period including March 12, 2023.

Minnesota's two contractor files

The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) splits contractors in two:

• Residential licenses. Anyone who contracts with a homeowner to build or improve a dwelling offering more than one special skill needs a residential building contractor or remodeler license; roofers have their own license.
• Contractor registration. Contractors offering one specialty on residential projects, and contractors on commercial projects who don't hold a residential license, register instead. Electricians, plumbers and other licensed trades hold their own DLI licenses.

DLI publishes both files as nightly CSV exports with business name, address, license number, status and dates. In the exports we downloaded on 30 October 2026, records with an "Issued" status and a business address in the metro's Minnesota and Wisconsin counties (matched by ZIP code) included:

Together that's more than 16,000 active licenses and registrations with metro addresses, against 10,456 CBP establishments, because the DLI files include owner-operators with no payroll. To vet a firm, look it up in DLI's iMS license search, confirm the status and license type match the job, and check the enforcement column.

Public jobs: the responsible contractor test

On a publicly owned or financed project with a prime contract estimated above $50,000, Minnesota law requires the prime contractor to verify under oath that it meets the responsible contractor criteria: workers' compensation and unemployment insurance in order, required tax registrations, no prevailing wage or misclassification violations in the past three years, and no current suspension or debarment. Every subcontractor must meet the same criteria regardless of the subcontract's size, and primes must list their first-tier subs. For a seller, a firm that bids public work has already assembled its compliance paperwork, which makes it a likely buyer of payroll, safety and document tools.

What Minneapolis permits show

The City of Minneapolis publishes its construction permits on its open data portal with type, work type, stated value, applicant and location. For permits issued in 2025:

Minneapolis is a remodeling city: commercial remodels carry more than three times the value of new commercial buildings, and only 75 residential permits were for new construction. The applicant field often names the contractor, so the file doubles as a list of who is active.

Selling to Twin Cities contractors

Winter shapes the buying calendar. Site, concrete and masonry crews buy heat, ground thaw and enclosures from October; residential firms plan spring work over the winter, which is when they have time to take a call. When you have the firms, our guide to finding decision makers helps you find the person who signs.

Illustrative example. North Star Thaw, its rates and its win rate are invented; the counts are from CBP 2023.

North Star Thaw (northstarthaw.example) rents ground-thaw units and temporary heat. Its targets are concrete (256 establishments), site preparation (431), masonry (276) and commercial builders (376): 1,339 accounts. If 40% are large enough to pour or dig through winter, that's about 536. Winning 10% (54 accounts) at five units for eight weeks at $650 a unit-week is about $1.4 million a season. The research that matters is which of the 536 have foundations scheduled for November. Describe that list in a sentence and Bebop finds the firms and writes a playbook for each one.

Where to find names

For the rest of the state, see Minnesota construction companies; for the design side, the Minneapolis architecture firms report.

Next step: segment the Twin Cities list by trade and size with the construction companies industry guide.