The Main Street economy
The backbone, sector by sector.
The founder-led businesses that hold up Main Street are facing the same reckoning — an owner generation retiring all at once, with too few successors behind them. Here is what that looks like across the sectors we focus on.
The common thread
A whole generation is heading for the exit at once.
Baby boomers own roughly 12 million U.S. businesses — about 1 in 6 American jobs — and most have no succession plan. As they retire, every sector below faces the same question: who takes over, and does the business survive the answer?
Manufacturing
Five million jobs, gone in a generation.
Since 2000 the U.S. has shed roughly five million manufacturing jobs and tens of thousands of factories. The specialty manufacturers and fabricators that remain are often family-owned, profitable, and hard to replace in their supply chains — and increasingly without a successor. Output never fell; the workforce did.
~5M
manufacturing jobs lost since 2000
75,000+
factories closed, 2000–2014
1 in 4 → <1 in 10
share of U.S. workers in manufacturing, 1960 vs today
U.S. manufacturing employment
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; NBER. Output rose even as employment fell — the losses reflect offshoring and automation, not falling demand.
Specialty trades
The skills are retiring faster than they’re replaced.
Electricians, plumbers, HVAC and concrete specialists — the multi-decade trade businesses that train the next generation are run by owners aging out, with too few apprentices coming up behind them.
~41%
of the construction trades set to retire by 2031
10k vs 7k
electricians retiring vs joining, each year
~1.9M
construction workers needed this decade
Sources: Associated Builders & Contractors; NCCER; industry workforce estimates.
Financial & professional services
The accountant retiring with no one to take the firm.
Accounting firms and advisory practices run on long client relationships and an owner’s judgment. As that generation retires, many find no successor and no buyer — and the firm, along with its clients, is left stranded.
~75%
of CPAs at or near retirement age
300,000+
accountants have left the field since 2020
1.4%
of students now major in accounting — down from 4%
Sources: AICPA; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; NASBA.
Energy & auto services
Cyclical, essential, and consolidating.
Oilfield-services and equipment businesses ride brutal commodity cycles that wash out under-capitalized owners and invite roll-ups — even as an aging workforce, the industry’s “great crew change,” thins the bench of experienced hands.
Independent auto and fleet-service shops face the same squeeze: founders nearing retirement, technicians in short supply, and national chains and private-equity consolidators circling the shops with steady, local customer books.
Our role
Different sectors, one pattern: a capable business, a retiring owner, and no clear path to keep it going. Preservation is that path.
We buy to hold, keep the people and the name, and invest to grow what the founder built — so the business stays in the community it has always served.
Preservation, held for generations.