Logging (United States) — NAICS 11331

An investor's rollup primer. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 11331 is a five-digit "industry" level that, in the 2022 U.S. system, contains exactly one detailed industry — 113310, also called Logging. This page summarizes the level and points you to the full 113310 primer for detail.

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1. Overview

Logging is the physical harvest of standing timber: crews fell trees, cut them to length, sort the logs by species and grade, skid them to a roadside landing, load them onto trucks, and haul them to a sawmill, pulp mill, panel plant, biomass facility, or export yard. It is the hinge between the landowners who grow the trees and the mills that turn logs into lumber, paper, packaging, and fuel.

The key investor takeaway is the same at this level as at the leaf below it: the logging business itself — the contractors who own the machines and do the cutting — is a low-margin, high-fixed-cost, safety-sensitive service trade run by thousands of small family firms, with no meaningful way to invest in it directly through public markets. The investable value sits in the timberland those loggers work on and the mills that buy the logs. Public investors reach it through timberland REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts — companies that own income-producing property and pass most profits to shareholders) and integrated wood-products firms; private investors reach it through direct timberland ownership, integrated producers, and TIMOs (Timber Investment Management Organizations — professional managers who run forests for pensions and endowments).[1]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy: sector (2-digit) → subsector (3-digit) → industry group (4-digit) → NAICS industry (5-digit) → national industry (6-digit). At most 5-digit levels, one code fans out into several 6-digit children. Logging does not. The five-digit industry 11331 has a single national industry beneath it — 113310 Logging — and the two are defined identically.[1]

That makes this level a pass-through: every establishment, worker, and payroll dollar counted under 11331 is the same one counted under 113310. There is nothing to "roll up" across siblings because there is only one child. The trailing zero in 113310 is simply the convention the United States uses when a five-digit industry is not subdivided further.

Because the two codes are the same population, this page stays short. For the full treatment — how the money works, the investable public and private names, demand drivers, regulation, consolidation, and risks — read the 113310 primer. Everything below is a compact summary of that material at this level.

3. How big it is (this level's figures)

The five-digit level carries exactly the child's numbers. Our ground-truth federal figures for NAICS 11331 (U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns, 2023; employer establishments only):

County Business Patterns (CBP) measures employer establishments, employment during the pay period including March 12, and payroll. It is not a revenue, output, harvest-volume, or capital-spending survey; the supplied federal file for this level contains no revenue, harvest, log-price, or capacity figures, so none are stated here.

Undercount caveat — large and one-directional here. Logging is dominated by small, individually owned, owner-operated crews, and CBP counts only firms with a payroll. It excludes the self-employed, no-employee businesses, and landowners who cut their own woodlots. Industry research that captures sole proprietors puts the total at roughly 43,000 U.S. logging businesses — about six times the 7,261 employer establishments above — and total industry revenue (which includes the value of the wood delivered, not just wages) near $16 billion (2025).[3] Read the $2.5 billion federal figure as payroll for the cutting-and-hauling step, not the size of the wood economy, and assume the true operator count is several times the employer count.

4. Investable universe (where the value concentrates)

Because 11331 has one child, "where value concentrates across the children" collapses to a single point: it does not concentrate in the logging code at all. There is no public logging-contractor stock — the harvest trade is too fragmented (no firm above ~5% national share), too low-margin, and too owner-operated to support one. Investors get exposure to the surrounding wood economy through the landowners and the mills:

• Timberland REITs — how you own the forest. Weyerhaeuser (WY, NYSE), the largest U.S. timberland REIT (~10.4 million U.S. acres), and Rayonier (RYN, NYSE), enlarged by its January 2026 all-stock merger with PotlatchDeltic (~4.1 million acres, 11 states, six sawmills).[4][5]
• Wood-products and packaging names — how you own the mills that buy logs: Louisiana-Pacific (LPX), Boise Cascade (BCC), West Fraser (WFG), International Paper (IP), Packaging Corp (PKG).[1]
• Private owners and managers — where most timberland capital actually sits: integrated family producers such as Sierra Pacific Industries and Roseburg, and TIMOs such as Manulife/Hancock, Campbell Global, and Molpus.[1]

See the 113310 primer, Section 4, for the full company table with scale figures. Tickers, prices, and yields belong to those names — not to logging itself.

5. How the money works

Two profit engines, only one investable. Engine 1, the timberland owner (investable): makes money from biological growth (trees add volume every year, a return roughly uncorrelated with stocks and bonds), from stumpage and delivered-log sales across product grades (sawlogs, veneer, pulpwood), and from land appreciation plus carbon, recreation, and higher-and-better-use sales. REITs report this as EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) and distribute most taxable income as dividends. Engine 2, the logging contractor (this code, un-investable): earns a thin cut-and-haul spread — harvested volume × grade × local price − heavy diesel, iron, labor, insurance, and compliance costs — and is squeezed when mill quotas tighten. The durable economics are in the tree and the land, not the machine that cuts it. Full detail in the 113310 primer, Section 5.

6. Demand drivers

Logging is a derived-demand, cyclical business — nobody wants a log for its own sake, only what it becomes. The pulls, in order of weight: housing and construction (sawlogs → framing lumber and panels, so the industry tracks housing starts and interest rates); packaging, paper, and tissue (pulpwood → a steadier, less housing-sensitive stream); engineered wood and mass timber (OSB, or oriented strand board, and CLT, or cross-laminated timber); wood pellets and biomass (large but financially volatile export demand); and log exports from the Pacific Northwest. Because all trace back to construction and global manufacturing, the level is pro-cyclical and interest-rate-sensitive. See 113310, Section 6.

7. Regulation

Regulation lands the same at this level as at the child, on four fronts: worker safety (OSHA's Logging Operations standard, 29 CFR 1910.266 — OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration);[6] environmental practice (Clean Water Act silviculture exemptions federally, and largely state Forest Practices Acts or voluntary BMPs — Best Management Practices — for harvest plans, stream buffers, and replanting); federal-land access (National Forest Management Act and Endangered Species Act reviews, historically the biggest force on Northwest harvest); and trade (U.S.–Canada softwood lumber duties near ~35%, plus a 10% Section 232 tariff from October 2025 — a tailwind for domestic log prices, a cost for builders).[1] Full detail in 113310, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

A barbell. The loggers are not consolidating — they're thinning out: the count of businesses has been shrinking (roughly 1.8% a year) under thin margins, aging owners, and few new entrants, so what's disappearing is harvest capacity, not concentration.[3] The landowners are consolidating fast: timberland has rolled up into REITs and TIMOs for 30 years, capped by the 2026 Rayonier–PotlatchDeltic merger of equals.[5] The mills — the loggers' customers — are shrinking too, with billions of board feet of North American capacity closed since 2023, removing buyers for surrounding crews.[1] See 113310, Section 8.

9. Risks

The same risks apply undiluted at this level: cyclicality and interest rates (demand is downstream of housing and global manufacturing); logger margin squeeze and capacity loss (flat delivered rates against rising fuel, insurance, and equipment costs); mill closures that strand wood and tighten quotas; safety — logging is the most dangerous occupation in America, with a fatality rate around 110 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers in 2024, roughly 33× the national average;[7] natural and biological risk (wildfire, hurricanes, insects, disease); policy, litigation, and trade swings; and a data gap — federal employer statistics exclude the many nonemployer operators, so the reported footprint is itself incomplete.[2] Full list in 113310, Section 9.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Buy the forest, not the crews. Public routes: the timberland REITs (WY, RYN) for the biological-growth-plus-land story with dividends, and the wood-products and packaging names (LPX, BCC, WFG, IP, PKG) for geared exposure to lumber and pulp prices. There is no listed way to own logging contractors. Private routes: TIMOs and private timber funds, private equity in integrated producers, direct tract ownership for stumpage plus carbon and recreation income, or financing the operators (equipment leasing, asset-backed lending). These are illiquid, long-horizon, inflation-hedge allocations.

Watch: housing and the rate cycle; the durability of Canadian lumber duties and the Section 232 tariff; further mill and logging-capacity attrition; pellet and mass-timber demand; and continued REIT–TIMO consolidation.

Bottom line. NAICS 11331 is identical to its single child, 113310 — a large, essential, fragmented service industry that itself offers almost no direct investment surface. The money is in the asset the loggers work on. For the complete company tables, economics, regulatory detail, and sources, read the 113310 Logging primer.

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Sources

1. 113310 Logging — investor primer (companion leaf page: full definition, adjacent/excluded NAICS codes, company tables, economics, demand, regulation, consolidation, and risks). Synthesized from the sources listed there, including U.S. Census Bureau NAICS 2022 definitions and the items below.
2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 113310 (7,261 establishments; 42,916 employees; $2,498,335 thousand annual payroll; $597,658 thousand Q1 payroll; employer-only coverage and methodology). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
3. IBISWorld, "Logging in the US — Industry Analysis and Market Size," 2025 (revenue ~$16.1B; ~43,000+ businesses; no firm >5% share; ~1.8%/yr decline in establishments). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/logging/78/
4. Weyerhaeuser Company, FY2025 Annual Report / Form 10-K and investor materials (~10.4M U.S. acres; largest U.S. timberland REIT). https://investor.weyerhaeuser.com/
5. Rayonier Inc., "Rayonier and PotlatchDeltic Announce Closing of Merger of Equals," January 30, 2026 (combined ~4.1M acres, 11 states, six sawmills; RYN ticker). https://ir.rayonier.com/
6. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "29 CFR 1910.266 — Logging operations" (safety standard; PPE, felling, first aid/CPR). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.266
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries 2024 (logging fatality rate ~110 per 100,000 FTE; highest of any occupation, ~33× the national average). https://www.bls.gov/iif/