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Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 23814Construction

Masonry Contractors (U.S.) — Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 23814. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, the standard the U.S. government uses to group businesses by their primary activity. This is a five-digit NAICS industry; the level below it is the six-digit national industry.

Short primer — single-child pass-through. NAICS 23814 (industry) contains exactly one child, NAICS 238140 (national industry), and the two are effectively identical: the same firms, the same receipts, the same economics. This page gives the rollup's own ground-truth federal figures and the shape of the industry, then points you to the full 238140 Masonry Contractors primer for the detailed treatment — investable universe, unit economics, regulation, consolidation, risks, and how-to-invest. Nothing here is duplicated in depth.

1. Overview

Masonry contractors are the specialty-trade firms that build with brick, concrete block, and stone — laying up walls and veneers, setting stone, applying stucco, building chimneys and fireplaces, and repairing and restoring the masonry on older buildings. It is one of the oldest building trades and remains a real, cash-generating business, but it is mature, slow-growing, and highly localized. On the federal employer-side data for this level, it is roughly a $28.6 billion, ~18,000-firm industry [1][2].

It is, first and foremost, a private-market industry: there is no publicly traded pure-play masonry contractor, so public-market investors get exposure only indirectly through the makers and distributors of brick, block, cement, mortar, and restoration products. The direct opportunity is private — owning, building, or lending to a masonry firm. See the 238140 primer for the full picture.

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

NAICS 23814 sits one rung above the leaf. Its structure is trivial: one child, which is the whole thing.

Child (national industry) What it covers Share of this level
238140 — Masonry Contractors Brick, block (CMU — concrete masonry unit), and stone installation; stucco; chimneys and fireplaces; masonry foundations; tuckpointing/repointing; façade cleaning and restoration ~100%

When a five-digit NAICS industry has a single six-digit child, the U.S. statistical agencies report the same establishments under both codes, so the rollup's totals and the child's totals coincide. There is no aggregation across siblings to do here and no mix to disentangle — 23814 is 238140. Everything in Section 2 of the child primer (precise scope, and the adjacent NAICS codes that are deliberately excluded — poured concrete 238110, precast/tilt-up 238120, siding 238170/238190, interior tile and marble 238340, hardscape paving 238990, and the manufacturing of the units themselves 327331/327120/327320) applies unchanged to this level [6].

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Ground-truth federal statistics ingested for NAICS 23814 — these are our own figures for this level, and they match the single child exactly:

Metric Value Source (year)
Annual receipts (employer firms) $28.59 billion Economic Census concentration file, 2022 [1]
Firms (employer) 17,971 Economic Census, 2022 [1]
Establishments 18,258 County Business Patterns, 2023 [2]
Paid employees 139,844 County Business Patterns, 2023 [2]
Annual payroll $8.60 billion County Business Patterns, 2023 [2]
First-quarter payroll $1.86 billion County Business Patterns, 2023 [2]

County Business Patterns (CBP) is the Census Bureau's annual count of employer establishments; the Economic Census is its every-five-years benchmark. No value here is suppressed or estimated. Derived: about $1.6 million in receipts and ~7.7 employees per establishment, and ~$61,500 of payroll per employee [1][2]. First-quarter payroll is ~22% of the annual total (an even quarter would be 25%), the fingerprint of an outdoor trade that slows in winter [2].

Undercount caveat — matters here. These are employer-firm figures and exclude government-performed work. Tens of thousands of self-employed, single-person masonry operators are not counted, which is why a broader private estimate that includes them reaches roughly $40 billion across ~22,000 businesses [7][8]. Separately, masons work across many industries: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the federal labor-statistics agency) counts about 294,000 workers in its broad masonry-and-related occupational group economy-wide [4] — well above the ~140,000 on the payrolls of firms classified as masonry contractors, because many masons work directly for general contractors and homebuilders. Small, owner-operated ownership dominates this trade, so the "industry" line understates the true masonry economy. The full accounting is in the 238140 primer, Section 3.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

Because 23814 has one child, all the value described in the child primer sits here too — there is no other sub-industry to spread it across.

  • Public companies (indirect only). No pure-play masonry ticker exists. Exposure runs through materials and distribution: brick makers Wienerberger (Vienna: WIE, brand General Shale) and Brickworks (ASX: BKW, brand Glen-Gery), plus Acme Brick inside Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B); cement, aggregates, and masonry products through CRH (NYSE: CRH), Cemex (NYSE: CX), Eagle Materials (NYSE: EXP), Martin Marietta (NYSE: MLM), and Vulcan Materials (NYSE: VMC); restoration products through RPM International (NYSE: RPM); and distribution through Builders FirstSource (NYSE: BLDR). Judge these as building-products equities — their masonry exposure is partial, not the whole business [14]–[23].
  • Private operators. The largest masonry contractors are all private and regional, and even the biggest — Sun Valley Masonry (~$114 million 2024 masonry revenue), Western Specialty Contractors, IMS Masonry — is a rounding error against the ~$28.6 billion industry [11][13]. This is a very long tail of small local shops.

Full tables (tickers, revenues, ownership context, and the ENR Top 600 list) are in the 238140 primer, Section 4.

5. How the money works

Masonry is a labor-and-materials, fixed-price subcontracting business: a contractor bids a lump sum to a general contractor, homebuilder, or owner, then earns the spread between that price and its actual costs. The economic engine is output per crew-day, not factory capacity — construction-and-extraction roles are about 80% of industry employment, at a ~$60,160 median wage for masons employed by masonry contractors [5]. Margins are thin and project-based (trade rules of thumb put gross margins around 25–40%, net in the high-single to mid-teens), there is no recurring service revenue, and "margin fade" — labor overruns, material inflation, weather delay, or a failed change order eating a fixed-price job's profit — is the central operating risk [26]. Because this level is its one child, the detailed cost stack and the metrics that matter in a private deal (backlog, bid-hit rate, estimate-to-actual, revenue per crew-day, work-in-progress schedules, receivables aging, bonding capacity) are exactly those in the 238140 primer, Section 5.

6. Demand drivers

The same forces drive the level and its child:

  • Nonresidential and institutional building — schools, hospitals, government buildings, warehouses, houses of worship, data centers, and manufacturing plants favor masonry for fire resistance, durability, and low maintenance; this ties demand to state, local, and institutional budgets.
  • Residential veneer — brick and stone veneer, chimneys, and fireplaces, concentrated in Texas and the South and tied to housing starts and remodeling [9].
  • Restoration, repair, and historic preservation — repointing, façade repair, and building-envelope work; a steadier, higher-margin niche partly forced by municipal façade-inspection ordinances [10].
  • The substitution headwind (structural) — field-laid masonry is a minority of the U.S. cladding market and keeps losing share to vinyl, fiber cement, engineered wood, precast panels, and thin/mortarless veneer that lower-skilled crews can install [22][27]. Paired with a shrinking, aging mason workforce (BLS projects only ~2% employment growth over 2024–2034, mostly replacing retirees [4]), this is the industry's defining long-run problem.

7. Regulation

Regulation applies identically at this level and its child. The load-bearing items: OSHA's respirable-crystalline-silica construction standard (permissible exposure limit 50 µg/m³, "Table 1" dust controls) plus scaffold and fall-protection rules for work at height [28][29]; the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) lead-safe rule on pre-1978 structures, relevant to restoration [30]; prevailing-wage rules (federal Davis-Bacon and state equivalents) on public work [31]; building codes via the model International Building Code and the TMS 402/602 masonry design standard [32]; and state-by-state contractor licensing, bonding, and lien rules. Labor-and-immigration policy directly affects a trade that leans on an immigrant workforce, much of it organized under the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers [30]. Compliance depth is itself a competitive edge for larger operators — see the 238140 primer, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

This is one of the most fragmented industries in the economy, and at this level the federal concentration data are the same as the child's: the four largest firms hold just 4.1% of receipts, the top eight 6.6%, the top 20 11.1%, the top 50 17.5%, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a 0–10,000 concentration gauge) is 9 — essentially zero [1]. Competition is local, relationship-driven, and won on price and reliability. Labor, not capital, is the moat. Private-equity roll-ups that swept HVAC, plumbing, and roofing are only beginning in masonry — it is a less attractive target (labor-intensive, lower-margin, seasonal, no recurring revenue) — with recent deals around 5.7x–8.2x EBITDA for specialty trades [31][32]. Detail in the 238140 primer, Section 8.

9. Risks

The risk register is the child's, unchanged: a structural skilled-labor shortage driving wage inflation and capping capacity [4][27]; secular share loss to cheaper claddings and precast systems [22][27]; cyclicality with construction and public budgets [9]; fixed-price execution / margin fade [26]; safety, silica, and liability exposure [28][29]; seasonality and weather [2]; customer-concentration and payment/bonding risk; immigration enforcement shrinking the labor pool; and data limitations — federal statistics exclude many nonemployers and provide none of the job-level margin, backlog, or cash-flow detail investors most need [7][8].

10. How to invest & outlook

Public-market routes (indirect only). No pure-play stock exists; buy the materials and distribution layer — brick (WIE, BKW), cement/aggregates/masonry products (CRH, CX, VMC, MLM, EXP), restoration products (RPM), distribution (BLDR), with Berkshire (BRK.B) owning Acme Brick immaterially — and judge each on balance-sheet strength, pricing discipline, and its actual, partial masonry exposure [14]–[23].

Private routes (the direct way in). Own or operate a regional firm (succession-driven deal supply is ample at modest mid-to-high-single-digit EBITDA multiples), provide minority growth capital or back the nascent roll-up, or lend via private credit against equipment, receivables, and seasonal working capital [31][32].

Outlook. A durable but low-growth industry — the broad market dipped ~1.6% in 2025 [8] — with twin structural forces (labor scarcity and substitution) capping growth, offset by brighter pockets in institutional and restoration work, reshoring-driven nonresidential building, and prefabricated/panelized masonry that stretches scarce labor. For patient private owners, the same labor scarcity that constrains the industry protects incumbents with trained crews. For public-market investors, masonry is best played through the supply chain, not the trade itself.

For the full treatment — investable universe tables, unit economics, the complete regulatory map, consolidation dynamics, and detailed how-to-invest and diligence checklists — see the 238140 Masonry Contractors primer.

Sources

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration & Receipts, NAICS 238140 (2024–25). Receipts, firm count, concentration ratios (CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50), HHI. https://api.census.gov/data/2022/ecnsize/groups/EC2200SIZECONCEN.html
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 238140 (2023, rel. 2025). Establishments, employees, annual and Q1 payroll. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
  3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Masonry Workers (2025). Broad masonry-and-related occupational group ~294,000 jobs; +2% employment 2024–34; ~20,700 annual openings. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/brickmasons-blockmasons-and-stonemasons.htm
  4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS Industry Estimates, NAICS 238140 (May 2023 / May 2024). Construction-and-extraction ~80% of industry employment; ~$60,160 median wage. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics5_238140.htm
  5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 238140 Masonry Contractors (scope, index, and excluded adjacent codes). https://www.census.gov/naics/?chart=2022&details=238140&input=238140
  6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns / Nonemployer Statistics — coverage and methodology (employer-only coverage; nonemployer exclusion). https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0800.html
  7. IBISWorld, Masonry in the US — Industry Report (2025). Market size ~$40.0bn; −1.6% in 2025; ~22,000 businesses (includes nonemployers). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/masonry/191/
  8. U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly New Residential Construction (2026). Housing starts and permits. https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/current/index.html
  9. U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Construction Spending (2026). Spending covers new structures and improvements to existing buildings. https://www.census.gov/construction/c30/current/index.html
  10. Engineering News-Record, Top 600 Specialty Contractors 2025 (2025). Largest masonry operators by reported 2024 masonry revenue. https://www.enr.com/toplists
  11. Sun Valley Masonry, About Sun Valley (2026). Family ownership. https://sunvalleymasonry.com/about/
  12. CRH plc, Form 10-K for 2025 (2026). Concrete masonry products, blocks, pavers, packaged mixes, cement, aggregates. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000849395&type=10-K
  13. Cemex, S.A.B. de C.V., Form 20-F for 2025 (2026). Cement, ready-mix, aggregates, masonry cement/mortar. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001076378&type=20-F
  14. Eagle Materials Inc., Form 10-K for FY2025 (2025). Cement, aggregates, gypsum. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000918646&type=10-K
  15. Martin Marietta Materials, Inc., Form 10-K for 2025 (2026). Aggregates, cement, ready-mix. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000916076&type=10-K
  16. Vulcan Materials Company, Form 10-K for 2025 (2026). Aggregates, asphalt, ready-mix. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001396009&type=10-K
  17. RPM International Inc., Form 10-K for FY2025 (2025). Sealants, coatings, waterproofing, building-envelope repair products. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000110621&type=10-K
  18. Builders FirstSource, Inc., Form 10-K for 2025 (2026). Building-products distribution and installation. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001316835&type=10-K
  19. Wienerberger AG, Company profile / Top Brick Manufacturers (2025). World's largest brick maker; U.S. brand General Shale. https://www.wienerberger.com/
  20. Brickworks Ltd., Glen-Gery acquisition and U.S. brick operations (2018/2025). Glen-Gery a top-tier U.S. brick maker; brick a minority of U.S. exterior cladding. https://www.brickworks.com.au/
  21. Berkshire Hathaway / Acme Brick, Acme Brick as a Berkshire Hathaway unit (2025). Immaterial to the group. https://www.brick.com/
  22. BusinessDojo, What is the Profit Margin of a Masonry Business? (2025). Third-party trade estimate: gross 25–40%; net high-single to mid-teens; margin fade. https://dojobusiness.com/blogs/news/masonry-profit-margin
  23. Mortar Net Solutions / Evolve Stone, Masonry Labor Shortage (2024–25). Regional wage inflation ~20–30%; substitution to mortarless/thin veneer. https://mortarnet.com/labor-shortage-rise/
  24. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Respirable Crystalline Silica — Construction (29 CFR 1926.1153). PEL 50 µg/m³, action level 25, Table 1 controls. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.1153
  25. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Scaffolding — Construction (fall protection, aerial lifts, falling objects). https://www.osha.gov/scaffolding/construction
  26. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Program — Contractors. Firm certification and lead-safe practices, pre-1978 structures. https://www.epa.gov/lead/renovation-repair-and-painting-program-contractors
  27. U.S. Department of Labor, Davis-Bacon and Related Acts. Prevailing wage/fringe on covered federal construction above $2,000; state "little Davis-Bacon" laws parallel it. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/government-contracts/construction
  28. International Code Council, 2024 International Building Code (model code; masonry chapter; references TMS 402/602). https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2024V1.0
  29. Buildermuse, OSHA Silica Dust Enforcement (2026). Third-party tracker: >$78M in penalties since 2018; construction citations up in FY2025. https://buildermuse.com/labor-wages/silica-dust-enforcement-is-getting-serious-/
  30. International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC), About / Prevailing Wage (2025). Founded 1865; ~74,000 members; oldest continuous North American trade union. https://bacweb.org/
  31. PrivSource, Masonry Acquisitions (2024–25). Maddix Capital / AK Masonry; KCM Capital & Gladstone Investment / Mason West. https://www.privsource.com/acquisitions/construction/2024
  32. Capstone Partners, Construction Services M&A Update (2025). NAICS 238 specialty-trade TEV/EBITDA ~5.7x–8.2x. https://www.capstonepartners.com/insights/article-construction-ma-update/