Other Schools and Instruction (U.S.) — NAICS 6116

A Histometrics rollup primer for public-market and private investors. Under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS, the U.S. government's standard industry taxonomy), 2022 code 6116 is the four-digit industry group that gathers the non-academic, non-trade end of education into four child industries: fine arts schools (61161), sports and recreation instruction (61162), language schools (61163), and everything else — tutoring, driving schools, and miscellaneous instruction (61169).

1. Overview

NAICS 6116 is the "everything else" tier of the education taxonomy. Its sibling groups inside the Educational Services subsector cover the institutions with diplomas and degrees — K–12 schools (6111), junior colleges (6112), universities (6113) — plus business and computer training (6114) and technical and trade schools (6115). What lands in 6116 is the instruction that grants no diploma and no degree: the dance studio and music school, the swim-lesson and gymnastics franchise, the Berlitz classroom, the SAT tutor, the driving school, and the yoga-teacher-training or CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) course.[1]

For an investor the whole group shares one shape. It is a large, labor-intensive, asset-light, cash-pay service economy built on instructor hours, sold mostly to households and institutions, and extraordinarily fragmented — dominated numerically by tiny local operators, with almost no clean public-market footprint. Federal statistics count roughly 59,138 establishments, about 503,283 employees, and $12.48 billion in annual payroll across the group,[2] against employer-firm receipts near $33.32 billion in 2022[3] — and, as Section 3 explains, the true economic footprint is a large multiple of that, because most of the teaching here is delivered by self-employed instructors the official counts miss.

Why look at 6116 as a whole, and why this rollup earns its keep: the four children look superficially alike (small, private, fragmented, discretionary) but their relative size, growth direction, ownership, and economics differ sharply. Sports instruction is riding a secular youth-sports boom and a private-equity feeding frenzy; language schools are quietly shrinking as their highest-value channel — foreign students learning English — contracts; fine arts is a low-growth, defensive-ish consumer staple; and the catch-all bucket blends a large, AI-whipsawed tutoring market with a boring, mandate-anchored driving-school niche and a wellness-plus-compliance grab bag. The distinctive value of the group view is the contrast across the four — which one is biggest, which is growing, who owns each, and where the rare ways in sit. That contrast is Section 2.

2. What's inside — the four children and how they differ

The group is the sum of four child industries. They are not variants of one business; they are four separate markets with different customers, cost drivers, and investment routes. The table leads with the contrast (ranked by revenue, largest first); the prose unpacks it.

Relative size. By revenue and employment the catch-all 61169 is the largest child (~41% of group receipts) — but it is itself a bundle of three unlike businesses (tutoring, driving, miscellaneous), so the largest single coherent market in 6116 is actually Sports & Recreation Instruction at ~35%. Fine arts is a solid third at ~21%. Language schools are a rounding error at ~4% — and notably the only child whose defining channel is in secular decline. (Sports has the most establishments of any child — ~20,916 — i.e., the most, smallest units.)

Ownership mix — the sharpest contrast. Read the fourth column and the four children run from "barely investable on the public market" to "not investable on the public market at all." The catch-all bucket holds the group's only genuine U.S.-listed pure-play (Nerdy, in tutoring). Sports has the most listed exposure — seven names — but every one is a diversified company where instruction is a single line, not a pure-play. Language schools give you a digital proxy (Duolingo) that competes against the classroom industry and sits outside the code, plus foreign education ADRs (American Depositary Receipts — certificates letting a U.S. investor hold overseas shares). Fine arts has nothing listed. Underneath the thin public layer, all four are overwhelmingly private — franchise networks, private-equity-owned branded platforms, nonprofits, and an enormous tail of independents.

How the economics differ. Same asset-light shape, four different engines. Tutoring's most defensible corner is exam-prep publishing (question banks built once, licensed at software-like margins). Sports splits into facility-heavy concepts (swim schools, gymnastics gyms) and asset-light ones (mobile leagues that rent existing fields). Driving schools are capacity-capped by a certified instructor and a dual-control car, with heavy commercial auto insurance. Language schools live and die on class utilization and on visa-driven international enrollment. Fine arts and the CPR corner of the miscellaneous bucket carry a nonprofit/contributed-income layer (donations, grants, mandated recertification) that pure consumer instruction lacks.

Direction of travel. Sports is the growth child (real secular tailwind, capital pouring in). Language is the declining child (its core intensive-English channel has roughly halved). Fine arts is the steady, low-growth, defensive-ish child. The catch-all is genuinely mixed inside itself — turbulent tutoring, flat driving schools, cyclical wellness on a compliance floor. Holding them apart is the entire point of the group view.

3. How big it is (the rollup figures)

Federal ground-truth for the whole group, and how it splits by child. Reference years differ — headcount and payroll are 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP), receipts and concentration are the 2022 Economic Census — so treat these as consistent orders of magnitude, not one synchronized income statement.

The children sum to the group almost exactly on every count-and-dollar line — establishments, employment, payroll, and receipts each match to the rounding — which is a strong sign the figures are internally consistent.[2][3] (Employer firm counts sum to 55,191 against a group total of 55,176; the tiny gap is expected because one firm can operate in more than one child industry.) A few things fall out of the arithmetic:

• Average pay is about $24,800 per employee per year[2] — low, because the workforce across all four children is heavily part-time, seasonal, and hourly (piano teachers, weekend swim coaches, SAT tutors, driving instructors, yoga teachers), not a sign of low professional wages.
• Payroll absorbs roughly 37% of receipts (comparing 2023 payroll to 2022 receipts)[2][3] — confirming a people business, not a capital-intensive one.
• The average firm books about $604,000 in receipts[3] and the average establishment runs about 8–9 workers[2] — micro-businesses, not corporations.
• First-quarter payroll is roughly a quarter (23%) of the annual total[2] — the child-level seasonality (fall enrollment, exam windows, ski season, spring recitals) largely nets out once the four are pooled.

The undercount caveat — essential here. CBP and the Economic Census count only employer establishments (businesses with paid W-2 staff), and the Economic Census generally excludes government-owned establishments.[4] Every one of the four children is a textbook nonemployer-dominated trade: the prototypical operator is one certified person with no payroll — a private music or language tutor, a solo swim or ski coach, a one-car driving instructor, a freelance yoga teacher or life coach. The Census Bureau's separate Nonemployer Statistics program exists precisely to count them, but our ground-truth file carries no nonemployer total for this group, so we state no adjusted market size and never a suppressed value.[4] Directionally, the true count of businesses is well above ~59,000 and the ~$33.32 billion employer-receipts figure understates total consumer and institutional spending on this kind of instruction — the child primers cite multi-code private market-research estimates (fine arts ~$7.8B; youth-sports family spending >$40B bundling travel and gear; a tutoring-plus-driving category ~$18.9B; professional coaching ~$16B; yoga and Pilates studios ~$14.7B) that each span several NAICS codes and should be treated as approximate, not official.[5][6] The honest read: the ~$33.32 billion employer figure is a firm floor, but it captures only the staffed, professionalized core; the full economy including independents is several times larger. We assert no group-wide profit margin, average price, enrollment, utilization, churn, or growth rate, because the federal file supplies none.

Concentration. This is one of the least concentrated corners of the economy the government measures. Across the group the four largest firms hold just 5.0% of receipts (the four-firm concentration ratio, CR4), the top eight 7.3%, the top twenty 11.5%, and the top fifty 16.6%; the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI — a standard 0–10,000 score where below 1,500 is "unconcentrated" and 10,000 is a monopoly) is a near-floor 11.5.[3] Notably, the group is more fragmented than two of its four children — language schools (HHI 266) and the catch-all bucket (HHI 59) — because pooling four separate sub-markets dilutes any single firm's share of the combined whole: no company is large in fine arts and sports and language and tutoring at once. No dominant national player exists, and the structure offers no natural path to one.

4. The investable universe (where value concentrates across the children)

There is no pure public-market play on 6116 as a whole, and no dedicated exchange-traded fund (ETF). Listed value is thin, indirect, and lopsided — almost all of it clusters in two children (sports and tutoring), with a digital proxy standing in for language and nothing at all for fine arts. Share prices, market caps, and multiples belong here, not in the prose above.

Listed names (all partial, indirect, or adjacent):

Where the industry actually sits — private and nonprofit owners, by child:

• Sports (61162): IMG Academy (sold to private-equity firm BPEA EQT for $1.25 billion in 2023), Unrivaled Sports (valued above $650 million), and multi-brand franchise platforms — Unleashed Brands (1,300+ locations), Youth Enrichment Brands (i9 Sports, backed by Roark Capital), Youth Athletes United — plus swim and gymnastics concepts and the YMCA/municipal backbone.[11][12][13]
• Tutoring & misc. (61169): Kumon (Japanese, ~25,000 centers worldwide) and PE-owned franchises — Mathnasium (Roark Capital), Sylvan (Unleashed Brands / Seidler); high-margin exam-prep publishers (Kaplan, Becker, UWorld, Barbri); CorePower Yoga (PE-owned); and nonprofit anchors the American Heart Association and American Red Cross (the CPR/first-aid certification giants).[7][13][14]
• Fine arts (61161): youth-enrichment franchises (School of Rock, under Roark's Youth Enrichment Brands; Bach to Rock), adult-ballroom chains (Arthur Murray, owned by Clarion Capital; Fred Astaire), lessons-plus-retail (Music & Arts, a Guitar Center division whose investors include Ares and Carlyle), and 400-plus nonprofit community arts schools.[15][16]
• Language (61163): Language Education Holdings (the 2022 combination of Berlitz, ELS, and ILSC), EF Education First, and Kaplan Languages Group, atop a long tail of independents.[17]

The honest summary for a public-market investor: you can buy a sliver of tutoring (mostly one micro-cap), a set of diversified proxies for sports, a digital proxy for language — and nothing for fine arts. Treat NAICS 6116 as a screening starting point, then separate live human instruction from assessment delivery, publishing, and software before valuing any name.

5. How the money works

Across all four children the economic core is identical: revenue is instructor hours (or seats, or memberships) times price, minus instructor pay — the dominant cost line. Two things follow everywhere. First, utilization of fixed capacity is the whole game — revenue per pool-lane hour, mat hour, classroom hour, court hour, chair hour, or instructor hour. An empty seat or idle instructor is perishable inventory; group formats carry near-fixed cost once the teacher is booked, so fill rate drives economics more than price. Second, labor is the largest variable cost and the largest operating risk, and much of it is hourly, part-time, or independent-contractor — which keeps worker-classification law a live exposure.

Onto that common core, each child bolts a different engine:

• Franchise royalties (all four children). The franchisor is asset-light: it collects a royalty (commonly ~4–10% of a unit's sales) plus a marketing fee and upfront franchise fee, and bears little capital cost, while the franchisee funds real estate, labor, and local marketing. Unit count and average unit volume are the franchisor's growth levers. This is the model behind School of Rock, i9 Sports, Berlitz, Mathnasium, and Goldfish Swim School alike.[13][15][17]
• Exam-prep publishing (61169). Behaves like software — content built once, licensed at high incremental margin — the most defensible economics in the group.[7]
• Facility-heavy vs. asset-light (61162). Swim schools and gymnastics gyms carry high build-out but strong mature economics (~$2.6M–$6M investment, ~$1.7M average revenue at a Goldfish unit); mobile and league concepts rent existing fields for a fraction of that.[8]
• Capacity-capped instruction (61169 driving). A lesson needs a certified instructor, a dual-control car, and a booked student in one place, so scheduling density and vehicle utilization are decisive, and commercial auto insurance is a heavy, sector-specific cost.
• Mandated recertification & contributed income (61169 CPR; 61161 community schools). CPR/first-aid credentials employers must legally keep current supply an annuity-like renewal base (an estimated 55–65% of that revenue), and nonprofit arts schools and the AHA/Red Cross close the gap between tuition and cost with donations, grants, and endowment draws — an income layer pure consumer instruction lacks.[14][16]
• Visa-driven mix (61163). High-ticket but volatile international students on F-1 study visas sit alongside steadier local adult ESL and the stickiest, highest-margin corporate/B2B (business-to-business) contracts.[9]

Working capital tends to be friendly: students often prepay for courses, packages, and memberships, so operators collect cash before delivering — a negative-working-capital tailwind that reverses into refund and deferred-service obligations if delivery slips. The metrics an analyst should demand across any of these businesses: capacity/instructor utilization, revenue per learner-hour, instructor pay as a percent of sales, membership/renewal churn, same-unit revenue and franchisee cash conversion, contract bookings and renewals, customer-acquisition cost and payback, and refunds/deferred balances — none of which the federal file supplies.

6. Demand drivers

Because the children are so different, so are their demand engines — a key reason to hold them apart. But several forces cut across the whole group:

• Household discretionary income and consumer confidence. Most of what 6116 sells is a want, not a need — private lessons, coaching, enrichment classes — and among the first line items cut in a downturn. The group skews toward affluent households, so demand is cyclical and income-sensitive.
• The "professionalization of childhood." Parents investing in their children — enrichment, college-admissions culture, year-round single-sport specialization, private coaching and tutoring — is the single most durable driver, spanning fine arts, sports, and tutoring at once. Aspen Institute data show per-child primary-sport spending up ~46% in five years.[6]
• Demographics. The number and age of children and the U.S. birth rate slowly set the size of the future youth cohort — a long-run headwind for every child-serving child of the group.
• Non-discretionary floors that ballast the cyclicality. Each child has a slice set by law or necessity rather than the business cycle: state driver-education mandates (~40+ states), OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and state CPR recertification rules, swim-safety demand (drowning is a leading cause of child death), immigrant/workforce ESL, and steady credentialing-exam volume (bar, CPA, medical, nursing, securities). These make the group more resilient than a pure-discretionary read suggests.[6][14]
• Public-policy swings. The reversal of test-optional college admissions and school-choice vouchers are tutoring tailwinds; the expiry of pandemic-era federal school funding (ESSER) is a headwind; tightening F-1 visa policy is cutting language schools' highest-value channel (new international enrollment across U.S. higher education fell 17% in fall 2025).[9]
• AI as a shared shaper. Artificial intelligence improves personalization and instructor productivity across the group while, at the low end, threatening to substitute for paid instruction — most acutely in undifferentiated homework help and beginner language learning.

7. Regulation

NAICS is a statistical classification, not a license, and the group is lightly regulated at the federal level — there is no national license to tutor, to teach dance, or to coach. Oversight is mostly state-by-state and activity-specific, and its intensity differs sharply by child:

• Driving schools are the most regulated child. Schools, instructors, vehicles, curriculum, and student records are licensed by each state (usually the Department of Motor Vehicles), which sets required classroom and behind-the-wheel hours — a modest moat that forces multi-state operators to re-clear approvals jurisdiction by jurisdiction.[18]
• Language schools carry a visa-and-accreditation regime. To enroll foreign students in F-1 status a school needs SEVP certification (Student and Exchange Visitor Program, run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to issue the Form I-20, and any full-time intensive-English program must also be accredited (CEA or ACCET). Losing accreditation or SEVP certification can destroy an enrollment channel even when the teaching is sound.[19]
• Sports instruction faces child-safety law. The Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 created the U.S. Center for SafeSport and imposes abuse-prevention training, background checks, and mandated reporting on youth-serving sports organizations — a real and rising compliance cost.[20]
• Fine arts touches music-licensing and private-career-school rules. Studios that play recorded music need public-performance licenses (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), and schools marketing vocational outcomes may fall under state private-career-school licensing.[15]

Several federal rules cut across all four children: the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Franchise Rule, requiring a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) at least 14 days before a franchisee signs or pays;[21] COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) and FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) for online services and school records; the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Title III for public accommodations; FTC advertising-substantiation rules on score, outcome, and earnings claims; child-safety background checks wherever minors are served; and IRS 501(c)(3) rules for the nonprofit community schools and CPR anchors.[21][22] Credentialing is largely private and voluntary (Yoga Alliance, the International Coaching Federation, state bar and CPA examiners, the AHA/Red Cross for CPR) — de facto standards the government does not set.

The cautionary regulatory tale is China 2021, when Beijing effectively banned for-profit academic tutoring for compulsory grades overnight, wiping out most listed Chinese tutoring firms' value — a reminder that even a lightly regulated service industry can be existentially policy-exposed, even as U.S. politics currently point the other way.[23]

8. Consolidation

The whole group is structurally fragmented (HHI 11.5; CR4 5.0%) with low barriers to entry — a certified instructor plus a room, a car, a pool, or a webcam.[3] Free and low-cost alternatives cap pricing at the bottom of every child (Khan Academy and free official SAT prep; free online driver's-ed content; YouTube and app instruction for yoga, music, and beginner languages; Duolingo for language). Competition is local and outcome-based, not national scale monopoly.

Consolidation is nonetheless happening — at the top of each child, along three recurring tracks that repeat across the group:

1. Franchise aggregation — School of Rock and Bach to Rock (fine arts); i9 Sports, swim and gymnastics chains (sports); Berlitz and inlingua (language); Mathnasium, Sylvan, Kumon, YogaSix (tutoring/misc.).[13][15][17]
2. Private-equity roll-ups — the dominant money-motion, and the sharpest cross-child signal is that the same sponsors span multiple children: Roark Capital's Youth Enrichment Brands reaches into fine arts (School of Rock), sports (i9 Sports), and tutoring (Mathnasium); Unleashed Brands spans sports (swim schools) and tutoring (Sylvan); Clarion holds adult ballroom; BPEA EQT bought IMG Academy for $1.25 billion. Sponsors are betting shared back-office, real estate, marketing, insurance, and franchise-development functions can turn cottage industries into scalable royalty machines.[11][13][15]
3. Digital platforms — Nerdy as the venture-backed online-tutoring consolidator, app-based marketplaces aggregating solo coaches and language tutors, and online driver's-ed land-grabs.[7]

Sports instruction is the standout for M&A intensity: private-equity investment into amateur sports reached roughly $2.11 billion in the first five months of 2026, more than four times the ~$550 million for all of 2025.[12] Yet even a wave of deals does not build a national champion. The asset being acquired is usually the owner's reputation and the instructors' relationships, not equipment or real estate — hard to centralize without degrading — and instructor quality, local demand, and state-by-state rules cap how far standardization can go. That is exactly why the group's HHI sits near the floor: no firm is big across all four children.

9. Risks

• Discretionary cyclicality. Most of the group is a want, not a need — month-to-month cancellation in a downturn — cushioned but not eliminated by the mandated slices (driver-ed, CPR, swim safety, credentialing exams).
• AI substitution. Free or near-free AI can commoditize homework help, beginner language learning, and low-end coaching, compressing pricing; the cautionary case (Chegg) saw revenue fall ~39% in a year as free AI eroded demand.[7] Premium human instruction, measured outcomes, and mandated/institutional demand are more defensible.
• Policy reversibility. Each child leans on reversible policy — the test-required reversal (tutoring), state driver-ed mandates (driving), F-1 visa issuance (language), OSHA/CPR and franchise rules (miscellaneous). A swing in any direction moves a market, and the China precedent shows policy can be existential.[18][23]
• Demographic softness. A declining birth rate slowly shrinks the future child cohort that fine arts, sports, tutoring, and driving schools all depend on.
• Labor and key-person risk. The business often is the instructor; recruiting, retention, turnover, wage inflation, and employee-vs-contractor classification pressure the core cost line everywhere.
• Thin margins and operating leverage. Fixed rent and core staff against variable enrollment means an enrollment dip runs straight into margin loss — sharpest in the facility-heavy and real-estate-committed operators.
• Child-safety, liability, and data risk. A business built on trust and minors carries abuse-claim, reputational, and COPPA/FERPA exposure where a single safety failure can be catastrophic to brand and insurability.
• Roll-up / leverage execution risk. The PE thesis assumes overhead can be centralized without degrading the local, relationship-driven service customers actually buy — an unproven bet at national scale, and one drawing early political scrutiny in youth sports.
• Private-company opacity and measurement risk. Most of the group is private and rarely discloses audited unit economics; and federal employer statistics undercount the smallest operators across all four children, so any top-down market-share or growth conclusion is imprecise.[4]

10. How to invest & outlook

Public routes (limited, indirect, and lopsided). The only U.S.-listed pure-play in the whole group is Nerdy (NRDY) — a micro-cap, high-volatility bet on online tutoring and school contracts.[7] Beyond it, public exposure means diversified proxies: Vail (MTN), Life Time (LTH), Xponential (XPOF), Planet Fitness (PLNT), Topgolf Callaway (MODG), Peloton (PTON), and DICK'S (DKS) for the sports child — bought for what each mostly is (a resort, a club chain, a franchisor, a retailer), not as a lessons bet; Duolingo (DUOL) as the digital proxy for language, and New Oriental (EDU) and China peers as foreign, policy-exposed tutoring/language ADRs; Franklin Covey (FC) for leadership content; and Graham Holdings (GHC) for indirect Kaplan exposure. There is no listed fine-arts pure-play and no ETF for the group. Where a public thesis exists at all, it is really a bet on asset-light franchise royalties, recurring subscriptions, and exam-prep publishing — not on teaching itself. For income investors, the business development companies (BDCs) and private-credit funds that finance these franchise roll-ups (Ares is a recurring name across the group) are an indirect route. Judge any share price, yield, or multiple only after normalizing customer-acquisition cost, retention, working capital, and instructor intensity — and separating live instruction from assessment, publishing, and software.[7][8][9]

Private routes (where most capital goes). This is fundamentally a private, small-business economy, and the menu is consistent across children: own or franchise a unit (a studio, a swim school, a Berlitz center, a Mathnasium, a driving school, a YogaSix or CPR territory — read the FDD and underwrite the specific unit, not the brand's average); back a roll-up or platform (PE sponsors consolidating branded operators; growth equity riding the youth-sports wave; venture funding for AI-tutoring and online driver's-ed); or, in the capital-intensive corners, asset-backed lending (driving-school fleets, facility-heavy swim and gymnastics build-outs). For any target, demand verified unit-level revenue, instructor/capacity utilization, retention and renewals, refunds and deferred balances, insurance and licensing status, and outcome evidence — and separate owner labor from transferable earnings before paying for projected synergies.[11][13][21]

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). The four children point in different directions, which is the whole reason to hold them apart. Sports — the growth child — should keep expanding on the professionalization-of-youth-sports tailwind and stay the group's hottest consolidation target, though valuations are running hot, the affordability ceiling caps volume, and Washington is starting to watch. The catch-all (tutoring/driving/misc.) — the largest child — is genuinely mixed: low-single-digit tutoring growth off a large base fighting AI substitution, flat mandate-anchored driving schools, and resilient wellness demand on a durable CPR floor. Fine arts should stay a low-growth, defensive-ish, cash-generative industry that rewards local operating skill over scale. Language — the smallest child — faces the toughest near-term path as tighter visa policy and app substitution squeeze its core, offset only by durable niches in immigrant ESL, corporate training, ASL, and study-abroad prep. Across all four, expect continued consolidation at the top of a still-fragmented field — never one firm capturing the national market — with the winners the operators that turn AI from a threat into a cost advantage, hold trusted credentials and outcomes, and win on local execution rather than on broad industry growth. The federal data supply no group-wide forecast; this outlook is qualitative and selective by design.

For the full analysis of any child — operator tables, unit economics, the complete regulatory map, and detailed sources — see the child primers: NAICS 61161 (Fine Arts Schools), 61162 (Sports and Recreation Instruction), 61163 (Language Schools), and 61169 (All Other Schools and Instruction).

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Sources

Consolidated from the four child primers (61161, 61162, 61163, 61169); figures for this level are Histometrics ground-truth federal extracts.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definitions — 6116 Other Schools and Instruction and its children (61161, 61162, 61163, 61169): structure and exclusions." 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=6116&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 6116 and children" (group: 59,138 establishments; 503,283 employees; ~$12.48B annual payroll; ~$2.91B Q1 payroll) — Histometrics ground-truth extract. 2023. https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP
3. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 6116 and children" (group: 55,176 firms; ~$33.32B receipts; CR4 5.0%, CR8 7.3%, CR20 11.5%, CR50 16.6%; HHI 11.5) — Histometrics ground-truth extract. 2022. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
4. U.S. Census Bureau, "Nonemployer Statistics — Methodology / About" (employer-only counts exclude self-employed sole proprietors; Economic Census excludes most government; no nonemployer total in our file). 2024. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics.html
5. IBISWorld, "Fine Arts Schools" and "Tutoring & Driving Schools in the US" (directional, multi-code private estimates: fine arts ~$7.8B; bundled tutoring/driving ~$18.9B). 2025–2026. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/fine-arts-schools/1541/
6. Aspen Institute Project Play, "State of Play 2025" (youth-sports family spending >$40B; per-child primary-sport spend up ~46% in five years; low-income participation ~half of high-income). 2025. https://projectplay.org/state-of-play-2025/introduction
7. Nerdy, Inc., Form 10-K FY2025 (only U.S.-listed pure-play in the group; ~$180M revenue, ~58% gross margin); Franklin Covey Co. and Chegg, Inc. financial disclosures (proxy names; Chegg revenue down ~39%). 2025–2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1819404/000181940426000015/nrdy-20251231.htm
8. Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN), Life Time (NYSE: LTH), Xponential Fitness (NYSE: XPOF), Planet Fitness (NYSE: PLNT), Topgolf Callaway (NYSE: MODG), Peloton (NASDAQ: PTON), DICK'S Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) — SEC Form 10-K filings and franchise/unit-economics data (diversified public proxies; Goldfish Swim School ~$2.6M–$6M investment, ~$1.7M avg revenue). 2025–2026. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar
9. Duolingo, Inc., Form 10-K FY2025 (~$1.04B revenue; coded as software, outside NAICS 61163); Institute of International Education, "Open Doors — Intensive English Programs" (69,386 students in 2024 vs. >133,000 peak in 2015; new international enrollment down 17% in fall 2025). 2025–2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1562088/000162828026012494/duol-20251231.htm
10. Graham Holdings Company, SEC filings (Kaplan Supplemental Education; Kaplan Languages Group sale effective May 1, 2026); New Oriental / TAL / Gaotu (NYSE: EDU/TAL/GOTU) investor data (China-based; policy risk). 2025–2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104889/000162828026029369/ghc-20260501.htm
11. BusinessWire, "Endeavor Enters Agreement to Sell IMG Academy to BPEA EQT for $1.25 Billion." 2023. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005615/en/
12. Sportico, "Youth Sports Was 2025's Breakout M&A Theme"; White & Case LLP, "Private equity's expanding role in youth sports" (~$2.11B into amateur sports in first five months of 2026 vs. ~$550M for all of 2025). 2025–2026. https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/private-equitys-expanding-role-youth-sports
13. Roark Capital, Portfolio (Youth Enrichment Brands: School of Rock, i9 Sports, Mathnasium); Franchise Times / PRNewswire, "Unleashed Brands" (1,300+ units; swim schools and Sylvan Learning). 2024–2026. https://www.roarkcapital.com/portfolio
14. MarketIntelo / Dataintelo, "CPR and First Aid Training Market" (~$1.85B; OSHA renewal-driven; recertification ~55–65% of revenue; American Heart Association and American Red Cross anchors). 2025. https://marketintelo.com/report/cpr-and-first-aid-training-market
15. School of Rock / Youth Enrichment Brands (PR Newswire, acquisition >$125M); Clarion Capital Partners, "Acquires Arthur Murray International" (~300 studios, 2024); Guitar Center (Music & Arts division; investors incl. Ares, Carlyle). 2023–2024. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/school-of-rock-acquired-by-youth-enrichment-brands-301980263.html
16. National Guild for Community Arts Education, "About the Guild" (400+ nonprofit member schools; tuition-plus-contributed-income model). 2025. https://www.cmsmusic.org/about-us/ngcae/
17. Quad Partners, "Berlitz, ELS and ILSC Join Language Education Holdings" (2022 combination); EF Education First; Kaplan International Languages; FranchiseHelp, "Berlitz franchise" (~10% royalty). 2022–2026. https://www.quadpartners.com/news/berlitz-els-and-ilsc-join-language-education-holdings/
18. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, "Graduated Licensing Laws by State" (~40+ states require driver education; GDL universal). 2025–2026. https://www.iihs.org/topics/teenagers
19. U.S. Department of Homeland Security / ICE-SEVP, "SEVP Certification, Form I-20, and the Accreditation of English Language Training Programs Act"; CEA / ACCET accreditation. 2025. https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/schools/certification/start-cert
20. U.S. Congress, Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 (Pub. L. 115-126); U.S. Center for SafeSport. 2017. https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ126/PLAW-115publ126.pdf
21. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, "A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise" (Franchise Rule; FDD required ≥14 days before signing/payment). 2024–2026. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumers-guide-buying-franchise
22. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, "Complying with COPPA"; U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov, "Businesses That Are Open to the Public" (Title III). 2020–2026. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions
23. Yicai Global, "New Oriental, TAL Education, Other E-Tutors Crash as China Bans Extra-Curricular Classes" (July 2021 for-profit tutoring ban). 2021. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/new-oriental-tal-education-other-e-tutors-crash-as-china-bans-extra-curricular-classes