Power and Communication Line and Related Structures Construction (NAICS 23713)

A Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors

Short rollup page. NAICS 23713 is a five-digit industry in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) — the U.S. government's standard scheme for grouping businesses. At this level of the Construction taxonomy, 23713 contains exactly one six-digit child industry, 237130, and is therefore effectively identical to it. This page gives the level's own ground-truth figures and points you to the full 237130 primer for detail; it does not repeat it.

1. Overview

This industry covers the contractors that build and maintain the physical backbone carrying electricity and data: high-voltage transmission lines and towers, substations, distribution poles and wires, buried power and fiber-optic cable, and cell, radio, and TV towers.[1] These firms do not own the grid or the network — they get paid to design, build, upgrade, harden, and repair infrastructure owned by electric and gas utilities, telecom carriers, renewable-energy developers, data-center operators, and governments. It is a specialty heavy-construction industry: essential but project-based, so its fortunes track customers' capital budgets.

Why it matters now: after roughly two decades of flat U.S. electricity demand, load is rising again — driven by artificial-intelligence (AI) data centers, factory reshoring, and electrification — and utilities have responded with the largest capital-spending wave in the sector's history (on the order of $1.3–$1.4 trillion planned for 2025–2030), much of it flowing to these builders.[8][9] A parallel federally funded broadband and fiber cycle pushes the communications side.[11]

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

NAICS 23713 has a single child industry:

Because there is just one child, the five-digit industry and the six-digit industry describe the same set of establishments, the same activities, and the same firms. The federal statistics reported for 23713 are the 237130 statistics. Everything on scope (overhead and underground power lines, substations, buried electric/telephone/cable/fiber cable, communication towers, renewable interconnection, storm restoration), on what is excluded (utilities and carriers that own the lines sit in NAICS 2211 and subsector 517; inside-the-building wiring is 238210; water/sewer lines 237110; oil-and-gas pipelines 237120), and on the barbell ownership mix (a few national consolidators plus thousands of small regional firms, alongside utilities' in-house crews) is covered in the 237130 primer.

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

Federal statistics for NAICS 23713 (United States) — identical to 237130 because the level is that single child:

The industry is strikingly fragmented: the four largest firms accounted for just 19.2% of receipts, the top eight 31.6%, the top twenty 44.5%, and the top fifty 56.9%. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) — a concentration gauge running from near zero (perfectly competitive) to 10,000 (a single-firm monopoly) — was only 156.2, near the bottom of the scale.[3][4]

Caveats. The figures mix years and definitions (payroll and headcount are 2023; receipts and firm counts are 2022; establishments are physical locations while firms may own several), and they count only employer businesses with paid staff, so self-employed nonemployer businesses are excluded.[5]

Undercount caveat. The $103 billion captures only work done by merchant contractors. A large share of power- and communication-line construction and maintenance is performed by utilities' and carriers' own employees, and by electric cooperatives and municipal utilities — labor counted under NAICS 2211 and 517, not here. So real national build-and-maintain activity is materially larger than the receipts figure.

4. The investable universe (where value concentrates)

Because 23713 equals its one child, the investable menu is exactly that of 237130. It is unusually deep for a construction niche. All the listed names are contractors (cyclical, backlog-driven), not asset owners, and most straddle several NAICS codes — so judge each by the share of revenue actually tied to lines, substations, towers, and fiber, not by headline company revenue. The largest public pure-plays and diversified builders are Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR, ~$24B FY2024 revenue, the clear leader),[6][7] MasTec (NYSE: MTZ), Primoris Services (NYSE: PRIM), Dycom Industries (NYSE: DY, the fiber specialist),[11] MYR Group (NASDAQ: MYRG, near pure-play T&D), IES Holdings (NASDAQ: IESC), and Centuri Holdings (NYSE: CTRI). Large private and employee-owned players — Pike, Kiewit, Bechtel, Michels, Black & Veatch, Burns & McDonnell, and private-equity platforms such as Artera — do much of the same work outside public markets. The full company-by-company table sits in the 237130 primer.

5. How the money works

These are fee-for-work contractors: the economics are about winning volume, controlling execution risk, and keeping skilled crews and equipment busy — not owning a rate base or collecting rents. Revenue mixes recurring master service agreements (MSAs) and maintenance work (the steadier base, often unit-price or cost-plus) with larger, competitively bid fixed-price project contracts (higher potential margin, but the contractor absorbs overruns). Revenue is generally recognized over a project's life as work progresses. What owners and analysts watch — backlog and book-to-bill, contract mix, operating/EBITDA margins (thin, mid-single to low-double digits), self-perform labor, working capital and retainage — is detailed in the 237130 primer. (EBITDA = earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization; T&D = transmission and distribution.)

6. What drives demand

Demand is essentially the capital budgets of utilities and telecom carriers, now expanding fast: electricity load growth from AI/cloud data centers, reshoring, and electrification; a $1.3–$1.4 trillion utility capital super-cycle over 2025–2030;[8][9] grid modernization, hardening, and aging-asset replacement; renewable interconnection (large generation-and-storage queues seeking grid connection);[10] and a broadband/fiber wave anchored by the federal BEAD program (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment — $42.45 billion).[11] Storm restoration adds unpredictable bursts of high-value emergency work. Full drivers and figures are in the 237130 primer.

7. Regulation

Contractors themselves are lightly regulated as businesses; what matters most is the regulation of their customers, which sets how much gets built. Key layers: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) governs interstate transmission (Order No. 1920 on long-term planning and cost allocation; Order No. 1977 on backstop siting);[12] the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) sets reliability standards; state public utility commissions (PUCs) approve utility spending and rate recovery — the real spigot on demand; and safety rules govern the work itself (OSHA 29 CFR Part 1926 Subpart V; the National Electrical Safety Code). Siting, permitting, and environmental review are the biggest bottleneck. Prevailing-wage (Davis-Bacon) and domestic-content (Build America, Buy America) rules apply to federally funded work. See the 237130 primer for detail.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The market is fragmented at the base and consolidating at the top — consistent with the low HHI of 156 and 19.2% top-four share.[3] Thousands of small regional firms compete on local distribution and maintenance, while national players (Quanta, MasTec, Primoris, and private platforms like Artera) roll them up for crews, licenses, MSAs, and equipment. Scale brings multi-region contracts, scarce-labor pooling, storm-response reach, and the bonding capacity megaprojects require; barriers to entry (skilled linemen, safety qualification, utility relationships, bonding) protect the largest work. Even the biggest public contractor's U.S. line-work is a modest fraction of the $103 billion of receipts, underscoring how much runway consolidators have. Deal detail is in the 237130 primer.

9. Risks

The dominant constraint is a skilled-labor shortage — a large share of experienced linemen are near retirement and apprenticeship pipelines can't keep pace, so too few crews can cap how fast the boom actually gets built.[13] Other risks: fixed-price execution (overruns hit the contractor, not the customer); cyclicality and interest-rate sensitivity of utility/telecom capex plus equipment lead times (notably large transformers); permitting and interconnection delays that push awarded work into later periods; telecom cyclicality; customer concentration; safety and wildfire liability; and policy/demand-durability risk (reliance on federal broadband and tax-credit programs, and on AI/data-center power demand actually materializing). Full treatment is in the 237130 primer.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Because 23713 is its one child, the routes are those of 237130. Public: the listed contractors in Section 4 — growth-oriented cyclical construction stocks valued on backlog and earnings growth rather than income (most pay small or no dividends) — plus broad U.S. infrastructure exchange-traded funds (ETFs, baskets of stocks that trade like a single share), for example the Global X U.S. Infrastructure Development fund (PAVE). Compare names by the portion of revenue actually tied to T&D, substations, towers, fiber, and utility services, and scrutinize backlog quality, contract-type mix, margin history, cash conversion, and bonding capacity; backlog methodologies are not standardized, so reported backlog should not be compared mechanically across companies.[6] Private: most of the industry is private, reached through platform acquisitions, regional add-ons, private credit, equipment financing, or infrastructure and private-equity funds.

Outlook (forward-looking, editorial). The demand backdrop is unusually strong and multi-year — load growth, a $1.3–$1.4 trillion utility capital super-cycle, aging-grid replacement, renewable interconnection, and a federally funded fiber wave have pushed contractor backlogs to records.[8][9] The main brakes are internal to the industry: the linemen shortage, permitting and interconnection delays, and equipment (transformer) lead times, plus policy sensitivity. Net: the runway looks long, but how fast the money converts to profitable revenue will hinge on labor, permitting, and execution more than on demand. For the full company detail, contract mechanics, and diligence checklists, see the 237130 primer.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definition — 237130 Power and Communication Line and Related Structures Construction." 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?chart=2022&details=237130&input=237130
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns: 2023 (NAICS 237130 — establishments, employment, payroll)." 2025. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 237130 (receipts, firms, concentration ratios, HHI)." 2025. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022
4. U.S. Department of Justice. "Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (0–10,000 scale)." 2023. https://www.justice.gov/atr/herfindahl-hirschman-index
5. U.S. Census Bureau. "About the Economic Census — FAQ (employer coverage; nonemployer exclusion)." 2025. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/year/2022/about/faq/faq-general.html
6. Quanta Services, Inc. "Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Results / Form 10-K (revenue ~$24B, segments, backlog, contract types)." 2024–2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1050915/000119312525078463/d804069dars.pdf
7. The Motley Fool. "Grid Modernization and Electrification Power Quanta's Backlog of Nearly $50 Billion." 2026. https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/05/31/grid-modernization-and-electrification-power-quant/
8. S&P Global Market Intelligence. "Surging Energy Demand Puts US Utility Capex Forecast Near $1.3T in 2026–30." 2026. https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/04/surging-energy-demand-puts-us-utility-capex-forecast-near-1-3t-in-2026-30
9. Edison Electric Institute / Electric Perspectives. "Electric Companies to Invest $1.4T to Support Customers, Power Growth (~$238.8B in 2026)." 2026. https://www.electricperspectives.com/capital-expenditures-grid-investment/
10. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Queued Up: 2024 Edition (~2,600 GW seeking interconnection; 95%+ zero-carbon)." 2024. https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2024-edition-characteristics
11. National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program ($42.45B)"; Dycom Industries FY2025 disclosures (~$17B BEAD-addressable market). 2025. https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/funding-programs/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program
12. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "Explainer on the Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation Final Rule (Order No. 1920); Order No. 1977 backstop siting." 2024. https://www.ferc.gov/explainer-transmission-planning-and-cost-allocation-final-rule
13. Lineman Central / IBEW. "2025 State of Power Line Jobs (~45% of linemen retiring within 10 years; IBEW membership ~860,000)." 2025. https://www.linemancentral.com/2025-state-of-power-line-jobs