50 County All-Stars that Pack a Punch with the Most Estimated Electrical Sales Potential

Electrical Marketing’s regular analysis of estimated electrical sales potential at the county level always seems to unveil some surprises. Oftentimes, it’s a Top 10 market that saw an unexpectedly large increase or drop in electrical contractor or industrial employment. In  the 3Q 2024 county employment data that EM’s editors use to develop our sales potential estimates, we found it interesting to find some counties often a bit off the radar to be ranked in the 50 largest counties when ranked in our total electrical sales potential estimates.

Small but mighty

For example, Franklin County in the Columbus, OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) cis ranked #26 in the table below with $774 million in total estimated electrical sales potential. The boost in sales potential may be related in part to a cluster of data centers construction in the area, which has proven to be a popular home for data centers run by  tech companies, particularly Amazon. According to a post in the Columbus Dispatch, “Nearly all of Amazon’s Ohio data centers are located in locations across the greater Columbus region in Hilliard, Dublin, Marysville, Johnstown, Plain City and Galena. They account for almost a third of the 179 data centers in the state.”

Another comparatively small county can also attest to impact of data center construction. Ranked # 17 in total sales potential in EM’s county-level electrical sales potential data with $891.8 million, Loudon County, VA, roughly 45 miles west of Washington, D.C., saw an increase of electrical contractor employment of more than a thousand workers between 3Q 2023 and 3Q 2024. Loudon County and its neighboring county to the east, Fairfield County have long been known as one the most appealing locales to build data centers.

Billion-dollar counties doing big business in the electrical market

While the Top 50 counties in the chart on page 2 account for roughly 32% of the industry’s estimated $150.7 billion in total sales for 3Q 2024, the Top 10 markets together account for roughly 13% of that total with $19.45 billion in combined estimated sales potential.

You may be quite familiar with many of the counties at the top of our list because they are part of MSAs among the usual suspects when it comes to big-time sales potential. Ranked #1 is the Phoenix metro’s Maricopa County, AZ, with $3.12 billion in sales; California had four markets in the Top 10: #2-Los Angeles County with $2.96 billion in sales; #5-Orange County in the Los Angeles metropolitan area with $1.98 billion in sales; #7-San Diego County with $1,631.4 billion in sales; and #8-Santa Clara, CA county near San Francisco with $1.42 billion. 

The fact that three of these counties are in Southern California proves just how important this region is to the electrical wholesaling industry and is a key reasons California typically accounts for an estimated 10% to 12% of total U.S. electrical sales.

It’s no surprise that counties in the Dallas and Houston metros are in the billion-dollar club, with Houston’s #3-Harris County ($2.34 billion); #5-Dallas County with $1.98 billion; and $10-Tarrant County, also in the Dallas metro ($1.13 billion). Rounding out the Top 10 #6-Cook County, IL, in the Chicago metro ($1.67 billion); and  #9-King County, WA ($1.23 billion).

While the employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that we use for this analysis is unfortunately a bit dated, it still gives you a good sense of the largest electrical markets at the county level, and that’s valuable information you can use to size up sales territories, market potential and geographies for future growth.