Original Research · BLS & Google Trends

A Tale Of Two Trade Economies.

Same 15 trades, same BLS QCEW and Google Trends methodology I built for the Tulsa research, run a second time for Oklahoma County. Some of it lines up. Some of it genuinely doesn't.

See The Comparison Read The Findings

The Scope

What this is, and why it exists.

The Tulsa trade-data project started as a way to answer real questions for Tulsa-area trade businesses: how crowded is my market, is demand actually keeping up with supply, what does the wage picture actually look like. Once that methodology existed, an obvious next question followed: does any of this hold up in a second market, or is Tulsa's story just Tulsa's?

So I ran the identical process for Oklahoma County, the other major Oklahoma metro, same 15 trades, same BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages methodology, same five years of Google Trends. Some findings travel between the two cities cleanly. Others don't, and the places where they diverge are the more interesting part of this page.

This isn't a pitch for Oklahoma City work. Everything else on this site is built around Tulsa. This page exists because the comparison itself was worth doing, and because every number in it is real and checkable, the same standard as everything else here.

At A Glance

15 / 15

Trades compared head to head, identical NAICS codes in both counties.

328,101

Households in Oklahoma County vs. 272,422 in Tulsa County, both ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates.

90 / 90

Oklahoma County trade-years fully disclosed by BLS. Zero suppressed, matching Tulsa County's own clean record.

The Comparison

All 15 trades, both counties, 2026.

Location quotient measures how concentrated a trade is locally relative to the national average (1.0 is exactly average): it's already population-adjusted, since it compares each county's share of that industry to its own share of total employment. Establishments per 10,000 households is a second, more intuitive population-adjusted view of the same concentration, using each county's real ACS household count as the denominator. Wage is the average weekly wage, also unaffected by county size. Search index is the one column that isn't population-normalized: it's each region's own 5-year Google Trends average for that trade's search term, each normalized independently to that region's own peak week, see the methodology note below before reading the search columns as directly comparable magnitudes.

Trade	Tulsa LQ	OKC LQ	Tulsa /10k HH	OKC /10k HH	Tulsa Wage	OKC Wage	Tulsa Search	OKC Search
Roofing contractors	1.88	2.17	4.99	6.00	$1,266	$1,204	34.96	44.97
Pest control services	1.61	1.65	2.28	2.44	$968	$984	17.23	46.43
Offices of chiropractors	1.60	1.07	4.92	3.44	$745	$719	20.17	66.23
Veterinary services	1.18	1.30	3.41	3.93	$964	$938	8.48	52.52
Plumbing and HVAC contractors	1.25	1.21	12.37	12.50	$1,282	$1,385	8.73	32.71
Electrical contractors	1.22	1.15	9.80	9.63	$1,425	$1,694	10.29	49.23
Painting contractors	1.06	0.73	3.45	2.50	$924	$920	7.65	46.70
Car washes	1.07	1.61	1.69	2.65	$665	$578	36.47	37.58
Offices of dentists	0.98	1.19	10.68	13.59	$1,312	$1,228	58.41	61.03
Landscaping services	0.97	0.81	9.43	8.26	$880	$934	10.86	42.33
Masonry contractors	0.96	0.84	1.39	1.28	$1,106	$1,159	1.25	22.30
General automotive repair	0.91	0.99	6.20	7.04	$1,083	$1,082	18.04	37.19
Janitorial services	0.89	1.10	5.87	7.56	$524	$520	2.15	16.42
Finish carpentry contractors	0.80	0.86	2.06	2.29	$1,123	$1,307	19.22	38.11
Site preparation contractors	0.44	0.46	1.47	1.62	$1,334	$1,425	0.02	0.38

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), private ownership, 2026 (Tulsa: year-end Q4; Oklahoma City: latest published quarter). Per-10k-household figures use each county's real ACS 2020-2024 5-year household count as the denominator. Search index: Google Trends, 5-year weekly average, pulled independently per region. Full county-level and quarterly datasets are published at /data/oklahoma-city-trade-data/.

The Findings

Where the two cities actually differ.

Both cities are roofing towns, but Oklahoma City is the more crowded one. Tulsa County's roofing location quotient (1.88) was already the highest of any trade in my original Tulsa breakdown. Oklahoma County's is higher still, at 2.17, and both counties' roofing establishment counts grew at almost the identical rate over five years (Tulsa +43.2%, Oklahoma City +44.9%). Both sit in the same hail corridor, so the shared growth story makes sense. What's notable is that Oklahoma City, the bigger metro, is proportionally even more saturated with roofing contractors than Tulsa is.

Chiropractic offices are moving in opposite directions. Tulsa County's chiropractic location quotient (1.60) was the third most over-represented trade in my entire Tulsa dataset, and it's still growing (+2.3% in establishments over five years). Oklahoma County's chiropractic LQ sits at a much more ordinary 1.07, and its establishment count actually shrank 4.2% over the same window. Same trade, same state, opposite five-year trend.

Electrical contractor wages are the single biggest gap in this entire comparison. I already flagged that Tulsa County's highest-paid trade still trails the nation, at $1,425 a week, 16.3% behind the $1,703 national average. Oklahoma City electricians average $1,694 a week: just 0.5% behind the national number, functionally at parity. Same license requirements, same state, a real and sizable difference in what the exact same trade pays 100 miles up the turnpike.

Dentistry tells opposite stories about consolidation. Tulsa County's dental-office count shrank 7.6% over five years even as pay rose, which I read in the original consolidation piece as independent practices getting absorbed into larger groups. Oklahoma County's dental-office count did the opposite: it grew slightly (+1.1%), off a base that's already the larger of the two counties (446 offices vs. Tulsa's 291). Whatever's driving Tulsa's consolidation isn't a statewide dental-industry trend, it's something more local to that market specifically.

Oklahoma City's search-interest numbers run higher than Tulsa's almost across the board, and that's a market-size effect worth naming honestly, not a demand story. Out of 15 trades, all but two (roofing and site preparation, both close between the cities) show Oklahoma City's five-year Google Trends average sitting well above Tulsa's, sometimes by 4-5x, for example painting (46.70 vs. 7.65) and masonry (22.30 vs. 1.25). Each index is normalized independently to its own region's peak week, so a larger, steadier media market like Oklahoma City's naturally produces a higher average baseline than a smaller market's spikier pattern. Read the pattern (which trades run relatively high or low within each city) as the real signal, not the raw gap between the two cities' numbers.

Site preparation and excavation is the one trade that's genuinely invisible to search in both cities. Tulsa County's index was 0.02; Oklahoma County's is 0.38, the entire difference explained by a single spike week against an otherwise flat line of zeros. That matches what I found writing about why paid search fails this trade in Tulsa specifically: it's booked through builders and general contractors, not homeowners typing a search, and that holds true in a second, larger metro too.

Methodology

How this was actually built.

Establishment counts, location quotients, and average weekly wages come from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, private ownership, the same 15 NAICS codes used throughout the original Tulsa dataset. Oklahoma County (FIPS 40109) is the direct county-level parallel to Tulsa County used everywhere else on this site; both counties' data came back fully disclosed for every one of the 15 trades at the county level, with no suppressed or missing cells to work around.

The one derived figure, establishments per capita, uses a fixed Census ACS 5-year household count as the denominator for each county: 328,101 households for Oklahoma County, 272,422 for Tulsa County, both the 2020-2024 estimate (table B11001), so the two counts are on the same statistical footing.

Search-interest numbers are Google Trends' own weekly index, pulled directly for each individual search term against each region's own Nielsen DMA (Tulsa: US-OK-671, Oklahoma City: US-OK-650), averaged across the trailing five years, with the single most recent, still-incomplete week dropped from the average. Google Trends normalizes each individual term-and-region pull to its own 0-100 scale based on that pull's own peak week. That means the county and wage columns above are on identical footing across cities, the search-index columns are internally consistent within each city, but a raw cross-city gap in the search columns should be read as directional, not as a precise multiple of actual search volume.

FAQ

Questions worth answering honestly.

Why compare Tulsa to Oklahoma City specifically?

They're the two major metros in the same state, close enough that a lot of the same seasonal and economic forces apply to both (the same hail corridor, the same state licensing rules, similar cost of living), which makes a genuine head-to-head comparison more useful than picking two unrelated cities at random.

Are these numbers directly comparable given the different market sizes?

The BLS establishment, wage, and location-quotient figures are directly comparable, they're the same federal methodology applied to two different counties. The Google Trends search-interest numbers need one caveat: each one is normalized independently to its own region's peak week, so a raw gap between the two cities' index numbers is a real signal worth reading directionally, not a precise multiple of actual search volume.

Why does Oklahoma City show higher search interest almost across the board?

Most likely because it's a larger media market with a steadier week-to-week search baseline, which raises its own 5-year average relative to a smaller market's more spiky, lower-baseline pattern. It's a real pattern worth noting, but it's a market-size effect, not proof that every trade genuinely has more demand pressure in Oklahoma City.

What's the single most surprising divergence in this data?

Electrical contractor wages. Oklahoma City electricians average $1,694 a week, just 0.5% behind the national average, essentially at parity. Tulsa County electricians average $1,425, still 16.3% behind the national number. Same trade, same state, a real gap.

Where does this data come from, and can I check it myself?

The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (public, free, anyone can pull it), Census ACS 5-year household estimates for the per-capita figures, and Google Trends pulled directly, term by term, for each region. Every number on this page traces back to one of those three sources, cited in the methodology section below.

Do you work with businesses in Oklahoma City?

No, not currently. This page exists because the comparison was worth doing, not as a pitch for OKC clients. Everything else on this site is built around Tulsa, and that's not changing.

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