Technical and Trade Schools (U.S.) — NAICS 6115

NAICS 2022 industry group 6115. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, the standard the U.S. government uses to group businesses by their main activity. This is a short rollup page: at this four-digit level the group is effectively identical to its single child industry, 61151. It reports the group's own federal figures and points you to the 61151 primer for full detail.

1. Overview

NAICS 6115 is where America goes to learn a job-specific skilled trade in a short, structured program that ends in a license, certificate, or credential — not a four-year degree. Because the group contains exactly one child industry (61151, also called "Technical and Trade Schools"), the two levels are the same population of schools by a different name: every dollar, campus, and employee counted at 6115 is counted at 61151. There is no additional activity that lives at 6115 but not at 61151.

The one useful thing to carry into the detail below is that this single child is itself four very different businesses stapled together — beauty and barber schools, flight academies, apprenticeship training centers, and a large catch-all of welding, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), truck-driving, and allied-health schools. They differ in size, direction, ownership, who pays, and even which federal regulator governs them. So the investable story is a story of contrasts, told in full at 61151.

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

NAICS groups businesses in a nested tree: sector (2-digit) → subsector (3-digit) → industry group (4-digit, this page) → industry (5-digit) → national industry (6-digit). The group 6115 has only one 5-digit industry beneath it, 61151, which in turn splits into four 6-digit industries [3]:

Because 61151 is the only child, 6115 and 61151 are numerically identical — the same ~$15.3 billion, the same 6,896 firms, the same 8,962 campuses. The four-way split shown above is the real internal structure of both levels, and it is analyzed in the 61151 primer. This page does not repeat that analysis; it gives the group's headline figures and hands you off.

3. How big it is

Our federal ground-truth figures for the group, NAICS 6115 (identical to 61151):

(CR4/CR8/etc. are the combined revenue share of the largest 4, 8, … firms; the HHI is a single-number concentration score the Census Bureau withheld for this group. Payroll and employment are 2023 County Business Patterns — CBP; receipts and concentration are the 2022 Economic Census — EC, so the two years are not perfectly aligned.)

Undercount caveat — the real activity is larger than $15.29 billion. The same three undercounts that affect the child affect the group one-for-one, because they are the same population [4]:

• The degree-granting twins are coded elsewhere. The largest flight programs are university aviation schools (Embry-Riddle, University of North Dakota) counted under Colleges and Universities (611310), not here; many well-known "trade schools" grant diplomas and split their revenue into other education codes [10].
• Employers and governments train off the books. Airlines run recurrent pilot training in-house, the military is the single biggest pilot trainer, and apprentice wages are booked in construction and manufacturing, not here [12][15].
• Small and nonprofit ownership dominates two of the four industries. County Business Patterns covers only establishments with paid employees, and the Economic Census generally excludes government-run and nonemployer businesses, so tiny owner-operated beauty schools, one-person flight instructors, and nonprofit union apprenticeship trusts all slip partly outside the count [4]. The starkest gap is apprenticeship: the code shows ~14,600 training-center staff, while the wider Registered Apprenticeship system served on the order of 940,000 participants in fiscal 2024 [15].

For scale, the research firm IBISWorld sizes the broader "Trade & Technical Schools" category at roughly $19.1 billion for 2025, above our $15.29 billion federal figure and consistent with a footprint larger than the code alone shows [16]. The federal file reports no enrollment, tuition, completion, placement, or profitability figure for the group, and none should be inferred from it.

4. The investable universe — where value concentrates

Almost none of this group is a clean public stock, and the little that is lives in one of the four industries — 611519 Other Technical & Trade Schools. The only listed pure-plays whose core business is a trade school in this group are Universal Technical Institute (NYSE: UTI) and Lincoln Educational Services (Nasdaq: LINC), both concentrated in 611519 and both growing double digits . Everything else is reached privately (beauty schools, flight academies), through nonprofit trusts (apprenticeship), or only indirectly through diversified public companies. The full map — pure-plays, proxies, and private ownership — is in Section 4 of the 61151 primer.

5. How the money works

The four industries share one physics — a campus is a fixed-cost asset and the game is filling seats — but run on three different revenue models [7][12][15]:

1. Title IV tuition (cosmetology, other trade): revenue is enrolled students × net tuition, most of it flowing from federal student aid (Pell Grants and federal loans), capped by the 90/10 rule.
2. Out-of-pocket, high-ticket tuition (flight): students self-fund six-figure career programs (~$70,000–$120,000), with financing availability acting as a demand throttle.
3. Employer-funded contributions (apprenticeship): union training trusts run on negotiated cents-per-hour employer contributions, and the apprentice earns a wage rather than paying tuition.

Capital intensity varies widely across the four — flight training bills roughly $3.4 million per campus versus about $1.2 million for a beauty school — which is why the group's receipts sit above its modest campus count. Details in Section 5 of the 61151 primer.

6. Demand drivers

The group rides one shared macro tailwind — skilled-worker shortages plus a cultural shift toward shorter, cheaper, job-linked credentials, especially among Gen Z — on top of which each industry has its own driver: state licensure mandates for cosmetology; airline hiring and pilot retirements for flight (Boeing projects ~119,000 new North American pilots over 2025–2044) [10]; reindustrialization and a 2025 executive order targeting 1 million new apprentices for apprenticeship [7]; and Workforce Pell Grants (effective July 2026) for short trade programs [12]. See Section 6 of the 61151 primer.

7. Regulation

The defining oddity of this group is that its four industries answer to three different federal regulators — a rule change that devastates one may leave the others untouched [8][11][16]:

• U.S. Department of Education (Title IV) governs cosmetology and other-trade schools through accreditation, the 90/10 rule, and the Gainful Employment / Financial Value Transparency rules effective July 2024.
• FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) governs flight schools through Part 141 certification and the 1,500-hour rule.
• U.S. Department of Labor governs apprenticeship through the 1937 Fitzgerald Act and Registered Apprenticeship rules.

The stakes are uneven: regulation is currently existential for cosmetology (a majority of programs fail the federal earnings test), a serious-but-survivable business risk for other-trade schools, and largely a demand creator for flight and apprenticeship. Full treatment in Section 7 of the 61151 primer.

8. Consolidation

The group is one of the most fragmented in the economy: the top four firms hold just 14.5% of receipts, the top fifty only 37.3% [2]. That low group-wide figure masks one concentrated pocket — flight training, where the top four firms hold 47.6% [12] — sitting above three highly fragmented industries. Consolidation is active in other-trade (private-equity roll-ups) and flight (airline vertical integration), absent in apprenticeship (geographically fixed nonprofit trusts), and cosmetology is contracting through closures rather than consolidating [7]. Section 8 of the 61151 primer has the by-industry detail.

9. Risks

The group's risks are the child's risks, and the classic mistake is conflating them across the four very different industries [8][10]:

• Regulatory/funding loss from three different sources — Title IV eligibility for two industries, the 1,500-hour rule for flight, federal grant volatility for apprenticeship. A single "education regulation" headline rarely hits all four.
• Cyclicality concentrated in flight (airline hiring) and apprenticeship (construction).
• An existential earnings problem concentrated in cosmetology, whose graduate wages struggle to clear the gainful-employment bar [7].
• The demographic cliff — a multi-year decline in the number of U.S. 18-year-olds from the mid-2020s shrinks the applicant pool for every industry [5].
• Data/measurement risk — the undercount in Section 3 means any group-wide sizing carries real uncertainty [4].

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes are narrow. The only real listed trade-school equities in the entire group are Universal Technical Institute (NYSE: UTI) and Lincoln Educational Services (Nasdaq: LINC) — both in 611519, both profitable and growing double digits — plus much smaller Legacy Education (NYSE American: LGCY) . Everything else is a proxy (CAE and Textron for flight; ManpowerGroup, Quanta, and EMCOR for apprenticeship; Sally Beauty and Regis for cosmetology), and there is no dedicated trade-school ETF (exchange-traded fund).

Private routes are where roughly 90% of the group actually trades — buying or building individual campuses and regional chains, backing private-equity roll-ups in welding, CDL (Commercial Driver's License), and allied health, or financing flight fleets and simulators. In every case, underwrite at the campus and program level: accreditation and funding eligibility, student outcomes, completion, utilization, and lease/equipment obligations.

Outlook. The group is best read as three good stories and one troubled one, unified only by a code. The trades-heavy industries (other-trade and apprenticeship) enjoy the most favorable demand backdrop in a generation; flight has intact long-run demand riding on a near-term digestion phase; cosmetology is mandate-protected but structurally challenged by the gainful-employment rules. Because 6115 equals its single child, the complete thesis, company-by-company detail, and sourcing all live in the 61151 primer — start there.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns (NAICS 6115), 2023 (establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms (NAICS 6115) (receipts, firms, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50; HHI suppressed). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
3. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS Definitions — Industry Group 6115 and Industry 61151 (611511/611512/611513/611519). https://www.census.gov/naics/?year=2022
4. U.S. Census Bureau. Economic Census / CBP methodology — nonemployer and government-establishment exclusions. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/year/2022/guidance/understanding-naics.html
5. New America. Cut Short: The Broken Promises of Cosmetology Education, 2025. https://www.newamerica.org/insights/cut-short-the-broken-promises-of-cosmetology-education/
6. Federal Student Aid (U.S. Dept. of Education). Final Regulations: Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment, 2023. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/federal-registers/2023-10-10/final-regulations-financial-value-transparency-and-gainful-employment
7. Boeing. Pilot and Technician Outlook 2025–2044 (119,000 new North American commercial pilots). https://www.boeing.com/commercial/market/pilot-technician-outlook
8. U.S. FAA / Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Part 141 Pilot Schools; 14 CFR §61.159 (1,500-hour ATP). https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certification/pilotschools
9. ATP Flight School. About / Pilot Training Programs and Cost, 2026. https://atpflightschool.com/about/
10. U.S. Department of Labor / Apprenticeship.gov. Data and Statistics (FY2024 active apprentices, participants, completers). https://www.apprenticeship.gov/data-and-statistics
11. U.S. Department of Labor. National Apprenticeship Act of 1937 (Fitzgerald Act); 29 CFR Parts 29 and 30. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/apprenticeship/policy/national-apprenticeship-act
12. The White House. Executive Order: Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future, April 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/preparing-americans-for-high-paying-skilled-trade-jobs-of-the-future/
13. Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Fiscal Year 2025 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results (revenue $835.6M). https://investor.uti.edu/
14. Lincoln Educational Services Corp. Form 10-K and Q4/Full-Year 2025 Results (revenue $518.2M) — with 611519 concentration, ownership, and BLS occupational drivers per the child primer. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1286613/000114036126007380/ef20060592_10k.htm
15. U.S. Department of Education. Final Rule to Create New Workforce Pell Grant Program (effective July 2026; 150–599 clock-hour programs). https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-issues-final-rule-create-new-workforce-pell-grant-program
16. IBISWorld. Trade & Technical Schools in the US — Industry Analysis, 2025 (~$19.1B broader category). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/trade-technical-schools/1535/
17. Associated Builders and Contractors. Registered Apprenticeship Programs and Construction Workforce Needs, 2024–2025. https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases