Big data analytics answers the question of what the most profitable industries are.. The most profitable sector in the United States is electrical equipment manufacturing, according to Powerlytics, a big data analytics company that offers financial insights into millions of businesses.

While similar lists are using secondary surveys and a sample of businesses in determining their list, Powerlytics is using data that’s already publicly available.

“There’s some selection bias [in other lists],” said Powerlytics CEO Kevin Sheetz. “They’re getting components of the population and not the complete population.”

Using a combination of more than 20 public data sets, including the Census and the Department of Labor, Powerlytics was able to create a profile of all 27 million businesses in the U.S.

The challenge was taking a disperse set of data and putting it together to create the profiles.

“A lot of public data sets don’t talk well together, so our expertise was to take these data sets and make them meaningful information both on the business side and the consumer side,” said Sheetz.

The rankings were determined by earnings before interest, taxes and amortization as a percentage of sales.

Via Forbes