Southern California & Michigan Boast Big Gains in Industrial Sales Potential

EM’s editors noticed some big year-over-year increases in the value of new construction data in the Manufacturing category published monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau, so we figured it was a good time to update our electrical sales potential data at the county level. For example, the most current Census value of new construction data shows the Computer/electronic/electrical niche had the largest increase through Jan. 2021, with a huge +227.6% increase to $24,962 million.

Some fresh manufacturing employment data at the county level through 3Q 2021 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also supported our thesis that the industrial market is on the move in many local market areas and may provide some new sales opportunities. Using the sales-per-employee multipliers from Electrical Wholesaling’s 2022 Market Planning Guide, we found that the 50 counties with the highest industrial employment could offer an estimated $6.2 billion in electrical sales potential (see chart below).

Five of the 10 counties with most industrial employees are in California, and Southern California’s Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego-Carlsbad Counties together account for an estimated $1.3 billion in industrial sales potential. In total, these counties added 7,654 employees year-over-year through 3Q 2021, according to the most recent data available from BLS.

Another cluster of industrial growth exists in Michigan, which added 12,650 employees YOY through 3Q 2021 and now employs 332,765 factory workers. With that increase, the state now has an estimated $647.5 million in estimated industrial sales potential. Elkhart County, IN, had the biggest YOY gain of any individual county with 9,683 more employees according to BLS employment data.

Click here to download sales estimates for more than 2,700 U.S. counties.