Who does business in Kansas City? 28,245 licenses tell a surprising story

If you run a business in Kansas City — or want to — you need a license from the city. It's one of the most basic regulatory handshakes between a local government and its economy: register, pay a fee, show up in the data.

Right now, there are 28,245 active business licenses on file with KCMO. That's a lot of entries. And when you start digging into where those license holders are actually located, what industries they're in, and how many of them quietly walked away last year, a picture of the city's commercial landscape emerges that doesn't quite match the "support local" narrative.

Nearly one in five license holders — 5,338 businesses — aren't based in Missouri or Kansas at all. Construction and trades dominate the list at a full 20% of all licenses. And 3,660 businesses let their licenses expire at the end of 2024 without renewing. That's a 13% non-renewal rate, which is a polite way of saying a lot of businesses decided KC wasn't worth the paperwork anymore.

The big picture: KC's economy on paper

The license roster is, in a sense, a census of commercial activity — every business that's formally registered to operate within city limits. And the composition is revealing.

The single largest category? Commercial and institutional building construction, with 3,025 licenses. That's more than 10% of the entire roster, just from one category. Add in residential remodelers (545), electrical contractors (374), plumbing and HVAC contractors (372), roofers (167), and the rest of the specialty trades, and you get to 5,647 construction-related licenses — a full 20% of the total.

The second-largest category — "All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services" — accounts for 2,928 licenses. That's a catch-all that likely includes consulting firms, tech companies, marketing agencies, and a grab bag of service providers. After that, beauty salons (694), miscellaneous retailers (643), and business support services (605) round out the top five.

What's notable is how much of the list is dominated by industries that build, fix, or manage property. Between construction trades (5,647) and real estate-related businesses — landlords, brokers, property managers (1,313) — roughly a quarter of all KC business licenses are tied to the built environment. That tracks with a city in the middle of a development cycle, but it also means KC's license revenue is heavily exposed to any slowdown in construction.

The out-of-state question: who's here from somewhere else?

Here's where it gets interesting. Of 28,245 total license holders, 20,129 are based in Missouri and 2,778 in Kansas. That leaves 5,338 — or 18.9% — from the other 48 states.

California leads the pack with 554 license holders. Texas follows at 521. Then Illinois (358), Florida (330), and New York (256). These aren't just a handful of national chains. It's hundreds of individual businesses in each state that have gone through the process of registering to do business in Kansas City.

And when you look at the specific cities, the comparisons get a little wild.

New York City has 123 active KC business licenses. Chicago has 117. Austin has 93. For context, that means Austin — a city 750 miles away — has nearly as many KC licenses as Parkville (96) or Belton (98), two actual Kansas City suburbs. New York has more KC licenses than North Kansas City (113), a town that literally shares the name.

This isn't necessarily bad. Some of these are national contractors who bid on KC projects. Others are tech companies or financial firms with remote operations. But it does raise a basic question about where the economic benefit of KC's commercial activity actually lands. When a fifth of your licensed businesses send their profits to another state, the local multiplier effect — the money that recirculates through restaurants, housing, and local services — shrinks.

The churn problem: 3,660 businesses didn't come back

Every KC business license expires at the end of the calendar year. Renewing is a choice. And in 2024, 3,660 businesses chose not to.

That's a 13% non-renewal rate. For every eight businesses that renewed, roughly one walked away.

We can't tell from this data alone why they left. Some closed. Some moved. Some probably just forgot to renew and will reappear later. But 3,660 is a substantial number — it's more than the entire licensed business count of most KC zip codes.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the lifecycle, 1,599 businesses have already renewed their licenses through the end of 2026. That's a small but forward-leaning group, and it suggests some portion of the business community is stable enough to plan ahead.

The gap between those two numbers — 3,660 walking away versus 1,599 locking in early — is one way to read the confidence level of KC's business community. It's not a crisis. But it's not exactly a sign of exuberance either.

Where the licenses cluster: a geography of commerce

Not all zip codes are created equal. The densest concentration of business licenses is in 64108 — the Downtown/Crossroads corridor — with 1,217 licenses. That's followed by 64114 (Waldo/Ward Parkway area) at 1,044 and 64111 (Westport/Midtown) at 1,015.

Those three zip codes alone account for more than 11% of all licenses in the city. The pattern is clear: licensed business activity gravitates toward the urban core and the established commercial corridors south of downtown.

The Northland shows up too — 64155 (608 licenses) and 64151 (592) — but the eastside zip codes are largely absent from the top of the list. 64127 (the east side near Independence Ave) appears at 523, but it's flanked by Northland and South KC zip codes with comparable or higher numbers and very different economic profiles.

On the Kansas side, Overland Park leads all suburbs with 585 license holders doing business in KCMO, followed by Kansas City, KS (375), Olathe (314), and Lenexa (306). Lee's Summit tops the Missouri suburbs at 461, then Independence at 353.

What the data can't tell us yet

• Revenue per license. The dataset doesn't include how much revenue each business generates, so we can't distinguish a solo consultant from a major contractor.
• Why businesses don't renew. The non-renewal number (3,660) is a fact; the story behind it — closure, relocation, regulatory frustration, simple neglect — is invisible in this data.
• Duration and stability. There's no field showing when a license was first issued, so we can't track how long the average business stays licensed or identify multi-year survival rates.
• Industry-level churn. We know 13% didn't renew overall, but we can't break that down by business type. Are beauty salons churning faster than contractors? The data doesn't say.
• Whether out-of-state businesses have local employees. A New York-based firm with 50 KC employees is very different from one that operates remotely. The license data doesn't distinguish.

What to watch next

1. The 2025 renewal cycle. When the current 22,986 licenses come up for renewal at year's end, the non-renewal rate will be a key barometer. If it exceeds 13% again, it suggests structural churn, not a one-year blip.
2. Construction dominance. With 20% of licenses in construction and trades, any slowdown in development — whether from interest rates, policy changes, or market saturation — could show up in the license count before it shows up anywhere else.
3. Out-of-state growth. Is the 19% out-of-state share growing or stable? Tracking this over multiple years would reveal whether KC's economy is becoming more nationally integrated or more locally anchored.
4. Geographic equity. The concentration of licenses in a few zip codes raises questions about where commercial opportunity is — and isn't — accessible. A future analysis could overlay license density against population, income, and transit access.

Methods and sources

• Data covers all active business licenses on file with KCMO as of February 14, 2026.
• Total count: 28,245 licenses across all validity statuses in the current dataset.
• Out-of-state count (5,338) excludes businesses with state listed as MO or KS.
• Construction/trades count (5,647) includes all categories matching construction, contractor, remodeler, and related trade keywords.
• Non-renewal rate (13%) calculated as 3,660 licenses with valid_license_for of 20241231 divided by 28,245 total.
• Zip code and city breakdowns use the zipcode, city, and state fields as reported by license holders.
• Source: KCMO Business License Holders
• Processed file: data/processed/kcmo-business-licenses-2025.json