When looking at the overall economic health of a local market, Electrical Marketing’s editors always look closely at major changes in population. With 80 columns of population data available in the spreadsheet for each and every local area, it’s easy to get lost in all the numbers available from the U.S. Census Dept. and miss some of the more glaring facts these population estimates reveal.
A recent Facebook post from City Electric Supply about a new branch opening in the fast-growing Charleston, SC, metro offered a quick-and-easy data point that cuts through all of this population data: the number of new residents moving into the area each day. For Charleston, that number in 2017 was 28 new residents, good for #33 on our list of the metro areas with the most new resident moving in each day. Ninety-five miles up the coast is Myrtle Beach, tied with Boston at #28 on the list, with 46 new residents packing up and moving in. Nine metros had 100 or more new residents moving in each day: Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Atlanta, Orlando, Seattle, Austin, Charlotte and Las Vegas. Three of the nation’s largest metros had more than 100 residents moving out each day: the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas.
When you stop and think about the potential economic impact of what each new resident could potentially mean to any metro, the importance of this statistic becomes clear. Each new resident may be part of a family that needs to buy or rent a new home, shop at local stores, install cable television enroll in schools, go to a doctor, barber or auto repair shop and pay taxes — all things that affect any local economy and eventually trickle down to impact the electrical market.jim