Are you sure you're focusing the right sales niche on LinkedIn?
Choosing the right LinkedIn Industry can be crucial for your sales and networking, finding the new connections, building meaningful relationships and acquiring a new customer on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has exactly 148 industries inside the platform. Choosing the right one can sometimes be very difficult.
If you choose the LinkedIn industry where there are no too many people, you can end up with a smaller, but more meaningful connection circle and easily add on the top of your sales.
On the other hand, if you choose the big LinkedIn industry, there are more people that can be the right fit for you and your company, but there is also much more noise and more competitors.
In this article, we’re going to see the newest LinkedIn industries benchmark and statistics that will help you to find the best LinkedIn industries where you should put your efforts while doing sales and networking on LinkedIn.
Also, we’re going to see the LinkedIn industries list with the exact number of people inside them.
So, let’s dive right into the data :)
LinkedIn Industries Benchmark and Statistics
In 2016, Joshua Waldman did really great research on the LinkedIn Industries rankings. But, it has been more than 3 years since than, and LinkedIn got 100M+ of new users.
So things are changed. Here’s how it looked 3 years ago:
As we can see, the top industry on LinkedIn was Information Technology and Services with amazing 10.9% of all LinkedIn users followed by Marketing and Advertising and Human resources with 8.9% and 3.9%.
Honestly, this is what everyone expected. But right now, the things are different.
You’re going to be surprised when you see the new benchmark.
Currently, LinkedIn has 575M+ users while more than 260 million of them are active on a monthly basis.
We carefully researched every LinkedIn industry and collected the number of all users inside them.
Here’s how the new benchmark looks like:
As you can see, Information Technology and Services still holds first place with 4.9% of all LinkedIn users.
Surprisingly, the second and third place are Hospital & Health Care LinkedIn Industry (with 3.7 % of people), and Construction industry (with 3.6% of people).
On the other hand, Marketing & Advertising and Human Resources are on the 11th and 25th place of the most popular LinkedIn Industries.
Keeping all of this in mind, here’s the LinkedIn industries list of the 10 most industries:
- Information Technology and Services
- Hospital & Health Care
- Construction
- Education Management
- Retail
- Financial Services
- Accounting
- Computer Software
- Automotive
- Higher Education
On the other hand, here’re the 10 LinkedIn industries with the lowest number of people:
- Legislative Office
- Nanotechnology
- Alternative Dispute Resolution
- Railroad Manufacture
- Tobacco
- Fund-Raising
- Fishery
- Political Organization
- Think Thanks
- Shipbuilding
When we take the look at the Joshuas findings from 2016, we will see that 6 LinkedIn industries that were one of the most popular industries 3 years ago are not in the top 10 list of LinkedIn Industries right now.
This includes Marketing & Advertising, Human Resources, Staffing and Recruiting, Internet, Management Consulting and Telecommunications.
Based on this, we can conclude that:
- LinkedIn is officially not just used for recruiting and human resources. It grew into the world’s most popular social media network of LinkedIn professionals. Even more, it looks like LinkedIn is not the primary source of HR professionals anymore.
- Marketing, advertising and consulting jobs became less popular in the last 3 years.
- On the other hand, the LinkedIn network is now more focused on bringing new solutions in the Hospital & Health Care and education industries than ever before.
The most important things we can conclude is that LinkedIn is not only the place for job openings and recruiting new people.
Right now, LinkedIn is the place where the business professionals from different LinkedIn industries are gathering and providing a value between each other.
In order to become influential in your LinkedIn industry, you need to know how to post on LinkedIn and make an outstanding LinkedIn Profile.
But, before you do that, let’s see the final LinkedIn industries list with the exact number of people in each LinkedIn industry.
LinkedIn Industries List
As promised, here’s the list of LinkedIn industries ranked from the top to the bottom:
LinkedIn Industry | Number of people |
---|---|
Information Technology and Services | 19196677 |
Hospital & Health Care | 14503513 |
Construction | 14257823 |
Education Management | 11429173 |
Retail | 11249719 |
Financial Services | 10379252 |
Accounting | 9463207 |
Computer Software | 8845451 |
Automotive | 8520162 |
Higher Education | 8227289 |
Marketing & Advertising | 8200733 |
Government Administration | 8191039 |
Banking | 8050709 |
Health, Welness & Fitness | 7264545 |
Real Estate | 7190024 |
Telecommunications | 6642734 |
Oil & Energy | 6486440 |
Food & Beverages | 6476410 |
Hospitality | 5689703 |
Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | 5609882 |
Electrical & Electronic Manufacturing | 5288276 |
Primary/Secondary Education | 5281252 |
Insurance | 5273627 |
Internet | 5009576 |
Human Resources | 4689437 |
Medical Practice | 4647230 |
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | 4330232 |
Consumer Services | 4306866 |
Management Consulting | 4071874 |
Pharmaceuticals | 3982488 |
Civil Engineering | 3945173 |
Design | 3931675 |
Research | 3881172 |
Restaurants | 3624691 |
Logistics & Supply Chain | 3546524 |
Architecture & Planning | 3532260 |
Law Practice | 3529127 |
Apparel & Fashion | 3252150 |
Consumer Goods | 3203873 |
Facilities Services | 3165573 |
Food Production | 3119302 |
Non-profit Organization Management | 3068321 |
Entertainment | 2932462 |
Machinery | 2916741 |
Chemicals | 2832195 |
Arts & Crafts | 2739434 |
Wholesale | 2666294 |
Utilities | 2535723 |
Legal Services | 2494586 |
Farming | 2431031 |
Mining & Metals | 2421183 |
Airlines/Aviation | 2405731 |
Leisure, Travel & Turism | 2349983 |
Sporting Goods | 2342739 |
Building Materials | 2317973 |
Music | 2149857 |
Enviromental Services | 2137698 |
Professional Training & Coaching | 2030905 |
Medical Device | 2030520 |
Individual & Family Services | 1860604 |
Cosmetics | 1809116 |
Mental Health Care | 1727206 |
Aviation and Aerospace | 1672897 |
Staffing & Recruiting | 1672466 |
Industrial Automation | 1653869 |
Graphic Design | 1639527 |
Security & Investigations | 1614345 |
Import and Export | 1595332 |
Public Relations and Communications | 1565888 |
Textiles | 1563422 |
Military | 1551130 |
Broadcast Media | 1542716 |
Biotechnology | 1536566 |
Media Production | 1520411 |
Business Supplies & Equipment | 1513730 |
Computer Networking | 1489730 |
Writing & Editing | 1475735 |
Consumer Elecronics | 1465350 |
International Trade and Development | 1397993 |
Events Services | 1389237 |
Photography | 1366983 |
Renewables & Envirnoment | 1318363 |
Computer Hardware | 1315815 |
Civic and Social Organization | 1275655 |
Furniture | 1197044 |
Defense & Space | 1184912 |
Computer & Network Security | 1143077 |
Printing | 1130902 |
Fine Art | 1103610 |
Religious Institutions | 1062678 |
Investmend Management | 1050092 |
Law Enforcement | 1033675 |
Publishing | 1028001 |
Information Services | 975115 |
Maritime | 954962 |
Outsourcing/Offshoring | 938856 |
Warehousing | 937743 |
E-learning | 888433 |
Executive Office | 874947 |
Government Relations | 847985 |
Animation | 828609 |
Semiconducs | 801795 |
Supermarkets | 774477 |
Program Development | 720828 |
Public Safety | 719803 |
Plastics | 717090 |
Alternative Medicine | 701539 |
Performing Arts | 679161 |
Online Media | 676664 |
Motion Pictures & Film | 675210 |
Commercial Real Estate | 673941 |
Judiciary | 668991 |
Packaging and Containers | 658331 |
Luxury Goods & Jewelry | 622203 |
Veterinary | 620386 |
Computer Games | 608479 |
Investment Banking | 603021 |
Market Research | 602979 |
International Affairs | 601210 |
Wine & Spirits | 559993 |
Newspapers | 558398 |
Translation & Localisation | 556080 |
Recreational Facilities & Services | 546573 |
Sporting Goods | 540562 |
Paper & Forest Products | 532646 |
Capital Markets | 522357 |
Public Policy | 519698 |
Package/Freight Delivery | 519161 |
Libraries | 456492 |
Wireless | 451410 |
Gambling & Casinos | 435111 |
Venture Capital & Private Equity | 408043 |
Glass, Ceramics & Concrete | 398075 |
Philanthropy | 387678 |
Ranching | 386123 |
Dairy | 364430 |
Museums and Institutions | 358110 |
Shipbuilding | 353022 |
Think Thanks | 335248 |
Political Organization | 329724 |
Fishery | 282056 |
Fund-Raising | 258899 |
Tobacco | 243124 |
Railroad Manufacture | 236080 |
Alternative Dispute Resolution | 223680 |
Nanotechnology | 166608 |
Legislative Office | 139994 |
We've prepared the fullest LinkedIn Marketing Checklist - that will help you find the weak points you should improve in your LinkedIn marketing.
Get it here.

Liked our LinkedIn checklist, and looking for a complete marketing checklist? You can check out this complete startup launch checklist.
What to do with this information?
Don’t despair if you’re in the low ranking industry. Your networking will not be impossible, just a little bit more difficult. Fortunately, since you have fewer people in your industry, you also have less competition and you will be able to build more meaningful relationships.
If you’re in the high ranking LinkedIn industry like Information Technology and Services or Computer Software, you may face a bigger competition. Thus, if you want to be heard and to have the loudest voice, you will need to work on your LinkedIn marketing and content strategies.
If this is your case, don’t hesitate to find out how Ilya Azovstev got 100.000+ views on his LinkedIn posts in just one month.
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