With national electrical contractor employment chugging along at a 900,000 annual rate for the past 13 months, EM’s editors were curious about which counties support electrical contractor employment at such a rapid rate, which the industry had not seen since 2008. We found that while many of the largest counties in the United States were also enjoying some of the largest increases in contractor employment, there were also some surprises in the top ranks.
For instance, the two counties that added the most contractors through the fourth quarter of 2017 on both a year-over-year and quarter-to-quarter basis were Maricopa County, which covers much of the Phoenix metropolitan area and, surprisingly, Utah County in the Provo-Orem, UT, metropolitan area. Maricopa County added 499 electrical contractor employees from 3Q 2017 to 4Q 2017 and 1,425 employees from 3Q 2016 to 4Q 2017. Provo-Orem added 499 and 1,275 employees, respectively, during those same time periods. The chart on page 2 offers some insight into the 50 counties with the highest electrical contractor sales potential.
Why the focus on electrical contractor employment data? Electrical contractors buy roughly 50% of all products sold through electrical distributors, and according to the sales-per-employee multipliers in Electrical Wholesaling’s 2018 Market Planning Guide, each electrical contractor employee accounts for roughly $65,151 in purchasing power. That means every 1,000 employees at electrical contracting firms represents $65.2 million in potential sales to electrical contractors. Three counties top $1 billion in electrical contractor sales potential according to the 2017 county data: Los Angeles County, CA; Harris County, TX (Houston metro); and Phoenix’s Maricopa County.
Looking at electrical contractor employment at the county level also provides some insight into the consolidated nature of the electrical market. There are more than 3,000 U.S. counties, but the 10 largest counties in the list on the previous page account for 14% of all electrical contractor employees. The 50 largest counties account for 36% and the 250 largest counties account for 71% of all electrical contractors’ employees.
One of the challenges in getting a real-time read on trends in county employment is that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) only releases data for electrical contractor employment at this level twice a year, and, unfortunately, the most recent data is usually at least six months old.
If you need a more current look at trends in electrical contractor employment, you can always look at Electrical Marketing’s quarterly updates for MSA-level electrical sales potential. The largest counties typically account for the lion’s share of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas in which they are located, so the percent increases in the MSA data will give you a good idea of where they are headed. The MSA data uses three-month moving averages to help smooth out the always volatile employment data.
