While concerns exist over the industrial market's short-term health and the oil market's plunge, the steady increase in construction employment in many key regional markets translates directly to additional electrical sales opportunities.
Most importantly for this industry, any rise in overall contractor employment means there are more electrical contractors working - and more of them and their electricians buying electrical products. According to Electrical Wholesaling's analysis of data construction employment data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the past 10 years, electrical contractors account for 13% of overall construction employment, and electricians account for roughly 7% of overall construction employment.
One handy tool you can use to measure the impact of electrical contractor employment on the sales potential of electrical products are the national multipliers in Electrical Wholesaling's 2016 Market Planning Guide, which was published this month. EW's editors take long-term employment trends in key market segments and their own annual sales forecasts for products sold through electrical distributors of electrical supplies to develop sales-per-employee guidelines that have proved popular over the years.
EW's sales-per-employee multipliers for electricians and electrical contractors help industry executives measure the market potential of the electrical contractor business by region, state, local area, and even by company. This year’s data says that every electrical contractor employee can represent roughly $43,993 in sales potential and that every electrician you can find in your area or company of interest represents $64,133 in sales potential. That's why it's so important to track swings in contractor employment.
While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t collect electrical contractor employment data down to the (Metropolitan Statistical Area), it does offer annual MSA employment estimates for electricians for the previous year, the most recent being May 2014. The chart on this page offers some recent employment history for the local markets that enjoyed the largest increases in electrician employment from 2011-2014. All of the MSAs in the chart saw electrician employment increase by over 1,000 workers. Electrical Marketing's editors did some quick calculations that showed that 1,000 electricians represent $64.13 million in electrical sales potential, and that the metropolitan New York MSA, with an increase of 5,000 electricians during this time period, saw $320.67 million in new sales potential from electricians and their contracting companies.
Using sales-per-employee estimates isn't intended to be an exact science, but it will give you a ballpark guesstimate for estimating the size of a regional market or an electrical contracting firm. You may want to analyze the sales potential of a specific geographic market or and electrical contracting firm with both the electrician multiplier and the electrical contractor multiplier and see which seems most realistic. Electrical Marketing's editors have found that averaging the results of both estimating methods to be a good approach, because each multiplier will produce different sales potential.