Federal obligations in telephone answering services (NAICS 561421)

Answering-bureau tags totaling $952.6 million

Federal agencies buy after-hours answering, message-taking, and related telephone answering services from vendors classified in 561421. Tagged obligations sum to $952,604,923.05. That is not a count of calls handled. Call volumes are not in the packet facts and are not estimated here.

Contact-center and telemarketing industries sit nearby in the 5614 group. A large federal call center may be tagged to a broader business-process or telephone-call-center NAICS rather than 561421. This page does not reclassify those awards. $952,604,923.05 is the answering-services tag on 390 actions.

390 awards: fewer rows, larger average

Three hundred ninety awards against $952,604,923.05 averages about $2.44 million per action. That is a concentrated services pattern relative to catalog supply codes. A handful of large answering or related call-handling vehicles can dominate a 390-row set. Open the industry hub to see the size mix; this guide will not invent it.

Credit bureaus (561450) appear later in this slice as another 5614 neighbor with a different dollar total and award count. Keep answering services and credit bureaus in separate cells. They share a NAICS sector, not a product.

Answering services versus carriers

Wired telecommunications carriers sell network access. Telephone answering services operate bureaus that answer and take messages. A contract for circuits should be 517111; a contract for an answering bureau should be 561421. Bundled deals can be tagged to the vendor’s primary industry. The $952,604,923.05 follows the 561421 tag as recorded on 390 awards.

Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. A public-health hotline funded by grant may miss this contract rollup even if a vendor answers the phones. Program pages cover assistance; this industry page covers tagged contracts.

A complete citation of this industry is $952,604,923.05 in USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 561421, telephone answering services, on 390 awards. Anything less—dropping the NAICS, dropping the word obligations, or dropping the contract-only universe—overstates what the extract contains. The packet facts do not include a fiscal year, so this guide does not invent one. Live tables on the industry hub can move when USAspending posts modifications; the harvested pair remains $952,604,923.05 and 390.

Obligation timing on call-handling vehicles

Answering contracts often obligate a period or a per-call ceiling and invoice monthly. The $952,604,923.05 is committed value, not cash already paid for every message taken. Unused ceiling can be de-obligated. Outlay fields in USAspending track payments.

Classification errors are expected at the margin. Vendors that straddle wired carriers, credit bureaus, and generic IT help desks coded elsewhere may land in 561421 on some actions and in a neighbor on others. Credit bureaus (561450) share the 5614 sector but sell credit information, not message-taking. The public-record stance is to keep $952,604,923.05 attached to 561421 as tagged, then check the 390 rows for large contact-handling ceilings versus smaller bureau awards. Re-tagging the extract by hand is out of scope for this overlay.

Hub and neighbors

Open the telephone answering services industry page for the 390 awards behind $952,604,923.05. Use the all-industries directory for wired carriers and credit bureaus without merging their dollars into this bureau total. Source: USAspending.gov contract awards.

Answering bureaus are not network carriers

Award count interprets the buying pattern. 390 actions producing $952,604,923.05 is a few hundred relatively large answering-bureau vehicles, with about $2.44 million per action as the simple average. That average hides mix: modifications, options, and delivery orders all increment count. 390 is not a count of unique companies and not a count of physical units. Use the hub amount sort to see whether a few large rows plus a long tail make up most of the tagged total.

Outlays remain a separate USAspending concept. An agency can obligate $952,604,923.05 across 390 tagged telephone answering services actions and pay on a different calendar. De-obligations after cancellations reduce the obligation ledger; they do not rewrite the fact that this NAICS has been a large tagged category in the harvest. Assistance without NAICS still sits outside even when the real-world activity looks similar. Program pages answer the grant question; this page answers the tagged-contract question.

Internal links on this file point only to the telephone answering services industry page and the all-industries directory. Those are the packet hrefs. Neighboring industry codes mentioned in prose are classification context only. Source note, copied from the packet: NAICS from USAspending contract awards. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. The overlay’s job is to state $952,604,923.05, 390, the obligation unit, and the boundary around wired carriers, credit bureaus, and generic IT help desks coded elsewhere.

Questions

How much federal contract spending is coded to telephone answering services?

NAICS 561421 shows $952,604,923.05 in obligations on 390 USAspending contract awards. That is telephone answering services as tagged, not wired carriers. The unit is obligations, not outlays or call counts. Quote it as USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 561421, not as cash outlays. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS, so grants remain outside the 390-award extract behind $952,604,923.05.

Is this the same as a federal contact center NAICS?

Not necessarily. Broader call-center work can be tagged to other 5614 codes. This page’s $952,604,923.05 follows the 561421 answering-services tag on 390 actions. Award descriptions on the industry hub show what each row actually bought. Credit bureaus (561450) share the 5614 sector but sell credit information, not message-taking. Keep $952,604,923.05 attached to 561421 as tagged on 390 actions; do not merge neighbor codes into the same unlabeled cell.

Why is the average award above $2 million?

390 actions against $952,604,923.05 averages about $2.44 million. Answering and related call-handling vehicles can be large. The industry hub shows whether a few rows dominate the total. That pattern is a few hundred relatively large answering-bureau vehicles, with about $2.44 million per action as the simple average of $952,604,923.05 over 390 awards. Check the 390 rows for large contact-handling ceilings versus smaller bureau awards.

Are grant-funded hotlines included?

Usually not. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS, so they fall outside this contract extract. Use program pages for grants and the industry page for tagged 561421 contracts. This industry guide covers tagged contracts only: $952,604,923.05 obligated on 390 telephone answering services awards in USAspending. Outlays are a different field; assistance without NAICS is a different award type.