Battered, bruised and at times a bit dazed, the electrical industry has almost made it through 2009’s house of horrors. It’s been a year of record sales declines, round after round of layoffs and market turmoil the likes of which the industry greybeards have never seen. It will all be something you can tell your grandkids about if they come into the family business — or never, ever tell them if you want them to stay with the company or sleep through the night.

However, it now feels like the electrical market has found or is near a bottom and that business will start creeping back to respectability within the next two quarters. Sales of electrical products through electrical distributors will increase by approximately $2.2 billion next year. This forecast puts U.S. sales for 2010 at $77.5 billion, a 2.9-percent increase from EW’s 2009 estimate of $75.3 billion, (a level of sales last seen in 2005). That 2009 sales figure is a 14.4 percent drop from 2008, one of the largest one-year decreases in industry history.

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Thank-you from the staff of Electrical Marketing.