Where Do Federal Contract Dollars Flow for Service Businesses?

Original research · USASpending.gov prime contract award summaries · Activity window FY2021–FY2025 · Metric cumulative obligations on awards with activity in-window · Published September 16, 2026

Where do federal contract dollars flow for the service trades this site covers? Across janitorial, landscaping, plumbing/HVAC, daycare, salon, and mobile-food NAICS, we count 48,860 prime awards with place-of-performance in the 50 states + DC and activity in FY2021–FY2025 — totaling $21.64B in cumulative obligations (and $4.47B in outlays). Janitorial leads dollars; plumbing & HVAC shows the highest small-business obligation share among the large trades. This is a procurement map, not a claim that every dollar went to local small firms — and it is distinct from SBA lending outcomes.

Read the money column carefully: USASpending’s award-summary total_obligated_amount is the award’s cumulative obligations, for awards that had an action in FY2021–FY2025. It is not a pure fiscal-year obligation flow. Small-business shares use the contracting officer’s business-size determination on the prime award.

Key findings

• About $21.64B sits on these service-NAICS awards. 48,860 primes with PoP in states/DC had contractual activity in FY2021–FY2025. Top five PoP states (TX, CA, VA, MD, DC) hold 39% of obligations.
• Janitorial dominates dollars; HVAC dominates small-business share among big trades. Cleaning (561720): $12.01B obligations, SB $ share 40%. Plumbing/HVAC (238220): $6.21B, SB $ share 88%. Landscaping: $3.38B, SB $ share 70%.
• Overall SB flags cover most awards but a smaller share of dollars. 77% of awards and 58% of obligations are coded SMALL BUSINESS by the contracting officer — the gap is largest in janitorial, where large facilities primes and AbilityOne-style recipients matter.
• Daycare, salon, and mobile food barely appear in federal procurement. Daycare 158 awards / $35.6M; salon group 14 / $1.6M; mobile food 79 / $6.8M. For those startups, federal contracting is not a primary demand channel — contrast with thick SBA loan activity on our jobs & lenders study.
• Defense and VA lead awarding agencies. Department of Defense alone accounts for roughly $13.20B of obligations in this set, followed by Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security — consistent with base/facility maintenance geography.

Obligations by industry

Industry names link to national startup hubs. SB = contracting officer’s business-size determination on the prime. Nail salons (812113) had zero awards in this extract and are included in the salon group for completeness.

Place-of-performance by state

State names link to state hubs. PoP is where the work is recorded — recipient HQ often differs (42% of awards in this set).

State × industry

Filter to an industry or state. State names link to the matching state × industry guide. The interactive table shows cells with at least 5 awards; the CSV includes every cell.

Top awarding agencies

Downloads

• National industry summary CSV
• State totals CSV
• State × industry CSV (all cells)
• Top agencies CSV

Readiness before research rabbit holes: historical obligations are not open solicitations. Use can a new business win government contracts to check capacity, registration, and entry routes first.

What this means for planning

Explore FY2025 federal cleaning contract obligations for state and agency totals, recorded competition categories and steps to research current solicitations. The cleaning-specific study measures FY2025 transaction obligations, not lifetime award values or open bids.

• Cleaning, landscaping, and HVAC have real federal facility demand — especially near large DoD/VA footprints — but janitorial dollars are skewed toward large/AbilityOne primes. Use the SB share column before treating a state’s dollar total as “local small-business opportunity.”
• Daycare, salon, and food-truck founders should not plan around federal contracts; SBA lending and local consumer demand matter more (see SBA jobs & lenders and sole-prop profits).
• Credit context: federal awards are not the same as bank credit access — compare with ABS credit-access rates.
• For industry startup steps, start from the hubs: cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, daycare, salon, food truck.

Methods & limits

• Source: USASpending.gov API download of prime award summaries; contract types A/B/C/D; NAICS listed above.
• Window: awards with any action FY2021–FY2025 (2020-10-01–2025-09-30). FY2026 excluded.
• Money: primary = total_obligated_amount (cumulative on the award). Outlays and potential value are companions only.
• Geography: primary place of performance state; 50 states + DC.
• Small business: CO determination field — secondary metric with limitations (primes only; status can change; not equivalent to “local small firm”).
• Limits: cumulative ≠ FY-flow obligations; deobligations; HQ≠PoP; multi-NAICS labeling; large primes in janitorial; sparse salon/food-truck cells; subawards not summed into prime totals.
• Full methods: see project METHODS.md in the research folder. Raw downloads archived with this study.