Preliminary analysis prepared independently by House Strategies Group LLC from public data, ahead of the City of Frederick's forthcoming supplier diversity assessment and disparity study RFP (draft under review). Not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Frederick. Every figure carries its source and its limits. Not a procurement-disparity finding.

Module · Market availability

Who is in the market

Availability is the denominator of every disparity index: the share of ready, willing, and able firms owned by each demographic group. This page shows two lenses side by side: the U.S. Census Annual Business Survey count of employer firms in the Frederick market, and the City's 2021 study's dollar-weighted custom-census availability. They measure different things, and a rigorous update needs both.

County employer firms
5,298
ABS 2022, Frederick County MD
Minority-owned
15.3%
813 firms, up from 10.7% in 2017
Women-owned
20.3%
1,075 firms
County nonemployer firms
25,500
NES-D 2022: 35.3% minority-, 43.1% women-owned

Availability by owner group (ABS lens)

Share of all employer firms in Frederick County, Maryland, 2022

Source: U.S. Census Annual Business Survey, Company Summary 2022 (Frederick County MD, FIPS 24021). Retrieved 2026-08-16.

The 2021 study's availability (custom-census lens)

Dollar-weighted MWBE share of available firms by category, FY2014-FY2018

Source: The City's 2021 disparity study (Griffin & Strong, P.C.), chapter availability tables.

Why the two lenses differ, and why that matters
The ABS counts every employer firm once, inside a fixed Census geography. The 2021 study weighted availability by the dollars and types of work the City actually buys, verified willingness and ability from vendor and bidder files, and drew its market as the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington CSA, sized to capture at least 75 percent of prime award dollars. So minority- and women-owned firms are 15.4 and 20.3 percent of county employer firms, while the study's MWBE availability ran 15.9 to 41.4 percent by category. Different geography, different weighting, different vintage: neither number is wrong. The update's availability re-measurement must reconcile the two on the City's current spending mix, and this portal shows both so no one is surprised by the difference.

The geography ladder: county, two-county proxy, Washington metro

Owner-group share of employer firms at three geographies, 2022. The City itself sits below ABS geographic detail; Frederick County is the smallest published geography containing it.

Source: U.S. Census ABS Company Summary 2022. Frederick County (24021); Frederick + Montgomery two-county proxy for Metro Division 23224, which ABS does not publish directly; CBSA 47900. Maryland statewide runs 28.8% minority-, 23.4% women-owned for context.

Why the ladder matters for the market-area decision
Minority-owned availability doubles from 15.4 percent at the county to 31.7 percent in the two-county proxy and 37.2 percent across the Washington metro. The 2021 study's CSA market reaches toward the wider end of that ladder. Where the update draws the market area, tested against where bidders and awardees actually come from, will move every availability figure in the study, which is why the decision has to be documented, not assumed.
Explore the market-area question

A growing base: 2017 to 2022

Owner-group share of Frederick County employer firms, ABS 2017 vs ABS 2022

Source: U.S. Census ABS Company Summary 2017 and 2022, Frederick County MD. 2017 Hispanic- and Asian-owned counts are suppressed and not shown.

The denominator is moving

Minority-owned employer firms grew from 10.7 percent of the county base in 2017 to 15.4 percent in 2022; Black-owned firms more than doubled their share. The 2021 study measured availability from FY2014-FY2018 records. An update that reuses those denominators would understate today's market.

Suppression, stated honestly
ABS demographic detail thins out at county scale. Construction shows 944 county employer firms with no publishable minority count; Professional, Scientific and Technical Services shows 868 firms at 13.7 percent minority- and 28.9 percent women-owned. Suppressed cells are treated as unknown, never as zero, on every page of this portal and in the data explorer, where each suppressed cell carries an S flag. A custom-census availability build, from the City's own vendor and bidder records, is how the full study gets below the suppression floor.
Compare against utilization

Reading availability correctly

Availability sets the bar utilization is measured against. Getting the denominator right is the single most contested element of any disparity study.

Method notes
  • ABS availability here is a group's share of all employer firms (Total base), the conservative convention, consistent with HSG's prior public-data builds.
  • ABS owner groups overlap. A firm can be both women- and minority-owned, and Hispanic is an ethnicity that crosses race groups, so shares never sum to 100 percent.
  • Public availability counts every firm equally. The full study re-runs a custom-census approach on the City's own vendor, bidder, and award records: weighting for capacity, geography, and verified willingness to bid, with the instrument published in advance.

The 2021 market area

The City's 2021 study defined the relevant market as the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington CSA, drawn to capture at least 75 percent of prime award dollars by radius from Frederick. The update should retest that definition against where bidders and awardees actually come from before adopting it, because the availability ladder above shows how much rides on it.

See the market-area module

The fuller universe: nonemployer firms

Owner-group share of employer firms vs nonemployer firms (sole proprietors), Frederick County MD 2022

Source: U.S. Census ABS Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D) 2022 and Company Summary 2022 (Frederick County, MD). NES-D counts are Census-rounded; nonemployer reference year 2021.

Why the nonemployer band matters for the SBR
About 83 percent of the county's firms are nonemployers, and that universe is far more diverse than the employer universe: minority ownership rises from 15.35 to 35.29 percent and women ownership from 20.29 to 43.14 percent. Nonemployers rarely win six-figure contracts, but they are exactly who competes for quotes and small purchases. The City's Small Business Reserve covers the $10,000 to $49,999.99 band, so the availability benchmark for that program should be built from this fuller universe, not from employer counts alone. That is a design decision the update has to make explicitly.

The capacity gap

Average receipts per employer firm by owner group, Frederick County MD 2022. The all-firms average is $5.26M.

Source: U.S. Census ABS Company Summary 2022 (Frederick County, MD). Receipts per employer firm.

Why size is a barrier, not a merit signal

Minority- and women-owned firms are systematically smaller, which is what bonding, insurance, and experience requirements screen on.

The capacity doctrine
Minority-owned firms in the county average about $1.68M in receipts per firm against $5.26M for the average firm, and 7.8 employees against 16.3. Women-owned firms average under $0.9M. The 2021 study's regression controlled for capacity and the disparities survived; disparity studies treat firm size and prior experience as outcomes to be explained, not neutral merit, which is why availability is not adjusted away for them.
How this becomes a barrier