While updating Electrical Marketing's 2Q 2018 Electrical Sales Potential estimates for local market areas, EM’s editors found some new fast-growing metros in the mix, as well as plenty of perennial all stars. It wasn’t surprising to see hot markets like Phoenix and Las Vegas ranked amongst the 50 high-growth metros. But you will find some surprises in our picks for the market areas that enjoyed the biggest employment increases in the first half of 2018 (see Full List link below).
To build the list, we looked at the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) that had year-over-year (YOY) increases through June in either construction or manufacturing employment of at least double the national average. We use this employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to construct the sales-per-employee estimates that generate our electrical sales potential data.
Nineteen MSAs logged construction employment increases through June of triple the national average (up +3.9% YOY), led by two markets with YOY gains of over 20% — Merced, CA and Midland, TX. In the industrial market, 20 MSAs were growing at triple the national YOY rate of 2.3% growth, with Reno, NV, leading the pack with 3,700 more manufacturing employees and a 23% YOY increase, due in large part to Tesla’s mega-factory in that market area. Five markets were growing at double the national rate in both the construction and industrial markets — Phoenix, AZ; Miami, FL; Omaha, NE; Atlantic City, NJ; and Midland, TX. It shouldn’t shock anyone that the three largest Sunbelt states — California (8), Florida (5) and Texas (6)— had the most markets in the 50 Metros chart, but it caught us by surprise that eight metros in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan had large enough manufacturing employment increases to make the list.
Just click here to download the data in an Excel .csv file more than 300 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all 50 states.
Click here if you would like to see the data in an interactive map format.