Executive Offices (U.S.) — NAICS 921110

1. Overview

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 921110, "Executive Offices," is not a business in the usual sense. It covers the government offices that house chief executives and their immediate staff — the office of the U.S. President, the 50 governors, and the mayors and county executives who run America's cities and counties [1]. These are public bodies funded by taxes, not companies that earn revenue or profit, and there is no public or private company you can buy that is an executive office.

So why would an investor care about an industry with nothing to own directly? Because these offices sit at the top of governments that together spend trillions of dollars a year, and there are two genuine, indirect ways in:

• Lend to the governments. State and local executive offices preside over roughly $4.2 trillion of municipal ("muni") debt [10], and the federal government finances itself with U.S. Treasury securities. Bondholders are, in effect, underwriting the fiscal competence these offices are responsible for.
• Own their vendors. Executive offices and the agencies they command are large, stable customers that buy software, consulting, cybersecurity, and program-administration services from private firms — the "government-technology" (govtech) and government-services ecosystem.

This primer treats the industry honestly for both public-market and private investors: what it is, how it is funded, and where the real, indirect investment adjacencies lie.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 921110 comprises "government establishments serving as offices of chief executives and their advisory committees and commissions" — the offices of the president, governors, and mayors, plus executive advisory commissions [1]. At the federal level, think of the White House Office and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); at the state level, a governor's office and executive staff; at the local level, a mayor's office, county-executive office, or city-manager's office. The activity is public administration: organizing policy, budgets, programs, and executive decisions.

What it explicitly excludes. Executive Offices is one of several codes inside NAICS 9211 ("Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support"). It does not include [2]:

• 921120 Legislative Bodies — Congress, state legislatures, city councils, and legislative advisory commissions.
• 921130 Public Finance Activities — treasury, tax administration, budgeting, auditing, and monetary-policy administration.
• 921140 Executive and Legislative Offices, Combined — used where the chief executive is also a member of the legislative body (e.g., a small town where the mayor sits on the council).
• 921150 American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Governments and 921190 Other General Government Support — personnel offices, election boards, civil-service commissions, and general-services departments.

It also excludes the operating agencies that actually deliver programs, which sit in their own NAICS sectors: justice and public safety (922), human-resource programs such as education and health administration (923), environmental quality (924), housing and community development (925), economic programs (926), space and technology research (927), and national security and international affairs (928) [2]. In short, 921110 is the command office, not the departments that carry out the work — and not the private contractors who serve them, who are classified in their own commercial software and professional-services codes.

Ownership mix. Essentially 100% government, and overwhelmingly local. Of roughly 213,800 people employed in these offices in 2025, about 199,100 (93%) worked in local government, 13,900 in state government, and about 830 in the federal government [3]. That distribution follows the sheer number of local governments: the 2022 Census of Governments counted 90,837 local governments — 3,031 counties, 35,705 municipal and township governments, 12,546 school districts, and 39,555 special districts — each with some form of executive leadership [4]. Because ownership is public by definition, private-equity firms and public shareholders never own the offices themselves; they can only own the vendors that serve them.

3. How big it is

The single most important caveat: standard "business" statistics do not measure this industry. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns and Economic Census — the datasets behind most industry and small-business figures — exclude NAICS 92 (Public Administration) entirely [6][8]. The Statistics of U.S. Businesses program covers only employer businesses and likewise excludes public administration [7]. Small Business Administration (SBA) counts, which derive from those datasets, therefore say nothing about executive offices. The right yardstick is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which does cover government payrolls.

By QCEW (2025 annual averages, preliminary) [3]:

• Employment: ~213,800 total — 199,091 local, 13,919 state, 832 federal.
• Establishments: ~5,105 — 4,525 local, 570 state, 10 federal.
• Total payroll: ~$14.8 billion — about $13.45 billion local, $1.23 billion state, $0.1 billion federal.
• Average annual pay: $67,572 local, $88,288 state, $120,206 federal [3].

Local-government employment in these offices has been broadly flat to slightly rising: 193,350 (2023), 193,588 (2024), 199,091 (2025) [3].

Two undercount notes. First, the QCEW federal figure (832) reflects only the federal establishments classified to 921110; the Executive Office of the President as a whole spans roughly 4,000 positions across bodies like the White House Office, OMB, and the National Security Council (NSC) [9], so the "executive branch leadership" most people picture is larger than the code captures. Second, because so many small local governments run lean, part-time, or combined offices, the true count of jurisdictions with executive functions exceeds the ~5,100 establishments the code records. For scale, all state and local government together employed 19.2 million people in March 2022 [5]; executive offices are a tiny sliver of that. The measurement gap reflects government coverage, not economic insignificance — and none of these vendors' revenues should be used to manufacture a "market size" for the code itself.

4. The investable universe

There is no direct or pure-play investment. No public or private company operates a NAICS 921110 executive office — these are units of government. Every "exposure" is indirect, through the debt these governments issue or the vendors that sell to them. Each item below spans other functions too, so treat them as proxies, not members of the industry.

Route 1 — Lend to the governments (fixed income).

ETF = exchange-traded fund. Interest on most munis is exempt from federal income tax, which is central to how the asset class is priced and marketed.

Route 2 — Own the vendors (equities). These government-services and govtech companies sell into executive offices and the agencies they run. None is classified in 921110; each is a counterparty.

Several other federal-facing names — Leidos (LDOS), SAIC (SAIC), and Palantir (PLTR) — also sell heavily to government buyers, but skew toward national security and defense (NAICS 928) and data analytics rather than executive offices specifically. In every case the exposure is partial, which is itself a risk (see Section 9).

Major private owners and operators. On the private side the parallels are:

• Guidehouse (Bain Capital): consulting and managed services to public-sector and commercial clients; Bain Capital acquired it from Veritas Capital [26].
• Peraton (Veritas Capital): a privately held government-technology and mission-services provider serving federal, state, and local customers [27].
• Deloitte: a network of legally separate member firms — not one publicly traded corporation — whose firms provide consulting and advisory services, including to public-sector clients [28].

Beyond specific firms, private exposure also comes through direct municipal-bond ladders; venture and private-equity investment in govtech startups (permitting, procurement, constituent-services software); public-private partnerships (P3s) and infrastructure funds that finance government-sponsored projects; and the large ecosystem of law, lobbying, and consulting firms whose product is access to and advice for these offices.

5. How the money works

The offices themselves have no revenue, margin, or profit — their economics are a budget cycle. The investor-relevant economics live in the debt they issue and the procurement that flows through them.

How the office is funded. The chief executive proposes a budget; the legislature appropriates the money; the executive office spends within that appropriation. Funding comes from taxes (income, property, sales), fees, intergovernmental grants (federal money to states, state money to localities), and borrowing. At the federal level, appropriations law — including the Antideficiency Act — bars spending beyond what Congress provides, which is why lapses produce government shutdowns. Most states carry a constitutional or statutory balanced-budget requirement, so state and local executives cannot run structural deficits the way Washington can.

Where bondholders' money is — the debt. State and local governments finance long-lived projects with municipal bonds; the market was about $4.2 trillion outstanding at year-end 2024, with record new issuance of roughly $514 billion [10]. An executive's fiscal management — budget discipline, reserve levels, and, critically, how well pensions and retiree-health obligations are funded — drives the government's credit rating from Moody's, S&P, or Fitch. Better ratings mean lower borrowing costs; deterioration means higher yields and, at the extreme, default. Federal spending is financed with Treasuries, whose safety anchors the entire bond market.

Where the money flows out — procurement. Executive offices and the agencies they run are buyers, and this spend — not the office's own payroll — is what drives vendor earnings. Federal work is contracted under the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), which recognizes two broad contract categories plus a hybrid [11]:

• Fixed-price: the contractor bears the cost and execution risk.
• Cost-reimbursement: the government reimburses allowable costs and pays an agreed fee.
• Time-and-materials (T&M): revenue depends on labor hours, rates, and approved materials.

Contracts can be terminated for convenience or default, which makes government backlog less certain than ordinary commercial recurring revenue [12]. For this ecosystem, the most useful operating metrics are funded backlog, contract awards, book-to-bill, and recompete win rates; the federal/state/local/commercial revenue mix; customer and agency concentration; labor utilization, wage inflation, and security-clearance availability; fixed-price cost performance; software subscription renewals, implementation progress, and transaction volumes; and cash conversion (receivables and unbilled work). Capacity utilization and same-store sales — staples in other industries — are largely uninformative here.

6. What drives demand

Underlying demand is durable, because governments must keep coordinating programs, responding to emergencies, administering benefits, and maintaining executive capacity. Key drivers:

• Digital modernization. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports the federal government spends more than $100 billion a year on information technology, much of it operating aging systems rather than building new capability — a multi-year tailwind for govtech and services vendors [16].
• Cybersecurity and data protection. Government systems hold sensitive financial, health, identity, and operational data, driving demand for secure infrastructure and specialized contractors.
• Population and service complexity. Census projections point to a larger, older U.S. population, increasing the administrative burden on health, retirement, disability, and social-service programs [17]. New residents and incorporations (especially in the Sun Belt) also expand local executive capacity; consolidations reduce it [4].
• Scope of government and mandates. New statutory responsibilities — emergency management, cybersecurity, climate resilience — expand staffing and, more visibly, contractor and software spending.
• The fiscal cycle. Government employment is famously stable and mildly counter-cyclical; executive-office headcount barely moves in recessions. What moves is discretionary contracting, which tightens when tax revenue falls. Budget pressure cuts both ways — it can spur automation and process-improvement demand while trimming discretionary consulting.
• Elections and turnover. New executives reorganize offices and reset procurement priorities, sharply raising or cutting discretionary spending and headcount — the federal level being the most volatile.
• Artificial intelligence (forward-looking judgment). AI could expand demand for modernization, casework automation, and citizen-service tools, but may also pressure labor-heavy contractors' pricing and billable headcount.

7. Regulation

Executive offices are simultaneously regulators and regulated. They operate under constitutions (federal and state), municipal charters, and statute, and are bound by:

• Budget and appropriations law — the federal Antideficiency Act; state balanced-budget rules; debt limits and voter approval for many bond issues.
• Transparency law — open-meeting ("sunshine") laws, public-records and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements, and financial-disclosure rules.
• Ethics and political-activity limits — conflict-of-interest statutes and the federal Hatch Act, which restricts partisan political activity by executive-branch employees.
• Civil-service and procurement rules — merit-hiring systems and competitive-bidding requirements that shape how offices staff up and buy.

For investors, two regulatory layers matter most because they govern the two ways in:

• For bondholders (the debt): municipal-securities disclosure is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), which set the continuing-disclosure framework bondholders rely on.
• For vendors (the procurement): federal contractors live under the FAR (pricing, cost accounting, changes, termination); suspension-and-debarment rules that can bar a firm from government work [13]; FedRAMP — the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program — which standardizes security assessment of cloud services for federal agencies [15]; the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), privacy and records rules, and accessibility standards; plus state and local procurement, public-records, and data-residency requirements. For software vendors, security authorization is both a barrier to entry and a sales prerequisite; for services firms, compliance failures can trigger payment delays, contract loss, penalties, or reputational damage.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Competition works on two very different levels.

Among governments (little, and unusual). Governments are geographic monopolies, so they do not compete to provide executive authority. What competition exists is the "vote with your feet" dynamic economists call Tiebout competition: states and cities compete for residents and employers through tax rates, services, and regulation. Executives who manage budgets and services well attract the tax base that ultimately backs their bonds. The long structural trend is a slow decline in the number of governments — driven mostly by school-district mergers, plus occasional city-county consolidations (Louisville–Jefferson, Indianapolis–Marion, Nashville–Davidson) — while annexation expands municipal reach and incorporation creates new offices [4]. Localities also choose between mayor-council and council-manager forms; the latter (a professional city manager reporting to an elected council) tends to be more professionalized and more software- and consultant-friendly.

Among vendors (genuinely competitive, and consolidating). This is where the investable action is. Competitive advantage comes from existing government relationships and past performance; access to contract vehicles and task orders; cleared or highly specialized personnel; security certifications and compliance infrastructure; installed software systems and accumulated government-data expertise; and the ability to bundle consulting, implementation, cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services. Public-sector software benefits from embedded workflows and high switching costs — Tyler, for instance, describes its products as mission-critical systems for public-sector back-office and administrative functions [20]. Consolidation is common because scale adds contract vehicles, capabilities, and delivery reach: Guidehouse's acquisition by Bain Capital [26] and Amentum's combination with Jacobs' government-services business [25] illustrate the appeal of building bigger platforms. The counterweight is procurement scrutiny — contracts are frequently recompeted, challenged through bid protests, or split among multiple awardees, which pressures pricing [14].

9. Risks

Because the offices themselves are not investable, operating risk is borne by the two counterparties — bondholders and vendors — not by owners of the industry.

Bondholder / fixed-income risks.

• Municipal credit risk. Fiscal mismanagement, revenue shocks, or unsustainable pension and retiree-health liabilities can force downgrades or default. Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy and Puerto Rico's restructuring are the cautionary cases; most general-obligation (GO) credits rarely default.
• Federal fiscal dysfunction. Government shutdowns, debt-ceiling standoffs, and abrupt spending reversals disrupt contractors and, at the margin, Treasury markets.
• Interest-rate and tax-policy risk. Muni prices fall when rates rise, and any change to the federal tax exemption on municipal interest would reshape the entire market's value.

Vendor / equity risks.

• Budget and policy risk. A new administration or budget agreement can redirect, delay, or cancel work; efficiency drives can cut agency headcount and renegotiate contracts.
• Recompete and concentration risk. Incumbency does not guarantee renewal, and a few agencies can account for a large share of an individual contractor's revenue.
• Fixed-price execution and implementation risk. Cost overruns can destroy margins even when revenue is secure, and failed software or process rollouts delay revenue and damage relationships.
• Labor risk. Wage inflation, shortages of technical staff, and clearance delays constrain growth.
• Cybersecurity and privacy. A breach can trigger remediation costs, lawsuits, contract loss, and reputational harm.
• Leverage risk. Private-equity ownership can sharpen operating discipline but may add debt and refinancing exposure.

Structural risks (both routes).

• Proxy risk. Every public company here has only partial exposure to executive-office work, so the thesis is less pure than the NAICS label implies.
• Measurement risk. Standard business datasets exclude the underlying government activity, limiting any top-down market-size analysis (Section 3).

10. How to invest and the outlook

Direct ownership is not available, so both public and private routes are indirect.

Public routes.

1. Municipal bonds — individual bonds or broad funds (MUB, VTEB for high grade; HYD for higher yield) to lend to the state and local governments these offices run [10].
2. U.S. Treasuries (e.g., GOVT) — the federal equivalent.
3. Govtech and government-services equities — Tyler Technologies (TYL) for local-government software, and federal-facing names such as Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Maximus (MMS), Conduent (CNDT), ICF (ICFI), CGI (GIB), Accenture (ACN), and Amentum (AMTM); Leidos (LDOS), SAIC (SAIC), and Palantir (PLTR) offer more defense- and analytics-tilted exposure. Examine government exposure at the segment and contract level rather than trusting a broad "government services" label.

Private routes. Direct municipal-bond ladders; venture or private-equity stakes in govtech companies; P3s and infrastructure funds financing government-sponsored projects; privately held platforms such as Guidehouse or Peraton; and the professional-services firms (law, lobbying, consulting) built around these offices.

Diligence checklist (either route). Customer and agency concentration; prime versus subcontractor status; contract vehicles, option years, funding status, and recompete calendars; fixed-price versus cost-reimbursement exposure; security, privacy, and compliance records; labor utilization, turnover, clearance pipelines, and wage pressure; implementation milestones, software-renewal rates, and cash conversion; and, for private targets, debt, acquisition dependence, and likely exit routes.

Valuation belongs at the company level, not the industry level. Public-market investors can compare price-to-earnings, enterprise-value-to-cash-flow, or similar multiples only after adjusting for contract quality, backlog conversion, cyclicality, leverage, and the share of recurring software revenue. Private investors should focus on normalized cash flow, customer retention, debt capacity, and exit-market comparables.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). The employment base of the offices themselves is about as stable as any in the economy and should stay so; local government, tracking Sun Belt population growth, is the likely area of gradual expansion, while federal executive headcount is the most exposed to efficiency and reform pressure. For the investable adjacencies the picture is constructive but selective: technology modernization, cybersecurity mandates, and the replacement of decades-old legacy systems point to durable multi-year demand for govtech and services vendors, favoring firms with embedded government workflows, recurring software or transaction revenue, diversified federal-state-local exposure, and disciplined contract execution. Labor-heavy contractors dependent on a narrow set of discretionary programs will be more volatile. Meanwhile the muni market's health depends on the interest-rate path, the durability of the federal tax exemption, and how squarely individual governments confront pension and healthcare liabilities. The honest investment question is never "how is the industry priced?" but "how creditworthy are these governments, and who are they paying?"

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Sources

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