What a difference six months make, especially when the recovery has seemingly stalled. At mid-year 2011 the electrical industry overall was facing better times ahead than at any time during the past four years. Nationally, we closed out 2010 up 2.9%. Historically, that is not very robust coming out of a downturn. For instance, following the 2002 recession the industry in 2003 racked up a nearly 7% growth rate. The strength of that recovery was demonstrated by all four of the major market segments responding with mid- to higher single-digit increases.

However, not unnoticed was that only the distributor-served industrial market showed positive growth last year coming out of the 2009 recession. That growth was a relatively strong 9.5%. One could hope that the industrial market's growth would be contagious and spread to other segments of the industry. But such was not the case. What we had was one segment in positive territory and three segments in negative growth territory.

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Thank-you from the staff of Electrical Marketing.