When we close the books on 2022, the electrical wholesaling industry will find that the industrial market had one of its better years in recent memory.
The number of billion-dollar mega-projects in the electric vehicle, battery, semiconductor and data center markets are certainly a big driver. But the growth in industrial employment and in the overall industrial market’s sales potential appears to transcend the impressive increase in megaprojects and is geographically widespread, as you can see on the chart on page 2. In this chart ,you will find the 50 largest local industrial markets, when ranked by estimated electrical sales potential using Electrical Wholesaling magazine’s 2023 sales-per-employee multipliers.
In total, these 50 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) enjoyed industrial employment growth of +4.1% through Q3 2022 over these same period last year. The Orlando (+9%) and Detroit (+8.3%) grew at twice that rate. The Detroit metro also added the most industrial employees, with a 19,600-employee increase over 3Q 2021, according to the more recent employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It’s also interesting to note that much of the nation’s industrial sales potential is centered in a relatively small number of markets. According to Electrical Wholesaling’s sales potential data, when you look at the 50 largest industrial metros, the 10 largest MSAs account for 44% of that group’s total revenue potential.
