East North Central Region - 2026 Market Planning Guide
Anyone thinking the electrical construction industry in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin is focused primarily on the auto industry and old-tech businesses needs to check out the diverse array of construction projects in the pipeline in this region. EW’s editors were particularly impressed with the diverse array of new work in Ohio and Indiana, but mega-projects are underway throughout the East North Central Region.
These include at least two data center campuses in the planning stage valued at $10 billion or more: the $28-billion Google data center expansion project planned for New Albany, OH and Intel’s plans for the $20-billion Johnstown, OH data center complex. Other mega-projects in the region’s pipeline include the $2.25-billion Eli Lilly Medicine Foundry in Lebanon, IN, now underway; the $650-million Pulaski Solar Farm in Karnak, IL, that broke ground in Dec. 2024; and sizeable university projects at Northwestern, Purdue, Wayne State University and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) and Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE). Two major airport projects are underway, too: the $1.8-billion John Glenn Columbus Airport project now underway in Columbus, OH, and a planned $1.6-billion terminal expansion at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport.
The region is also seeing some residential construction with the Indianapolis metro ranked #17 in single-family building permits through July with a +4.9% increase to 5,676 permits, and Columbus, OH, ranked #7 in multi-family building permits with 6,956 permits, a nice +49.7% YOY increase over July 2024.
HOW TO USE THE DATA IN THE MARKET PLANNING GUIDE
The late Andrea Herbert, former chief editor of Electrical Wholesaling, launched the Market Planning Guide more than 40 years ago. She won several national editorial awards for her efforts with the Market Planning Guide, including the Jesse H. Neal Award, the business press’ highest honor.
She wanted the Market Planning Guide to be a practical tool for salespeople and managers at distributors, manufacturers and independent manufacturers’ reps, and her thoughts on how to use it still ring true today:
• Determine market share & penetration.
• Evaluate branch performance and decide which local market areas may support new branches.
• Determine the areas with the greatest sales potential so you can concentrate your salespeople’s efforts in the most productive directions.
• Keep on top of changes in the market area (new residential development, large construction projects in the pipeline & population shifts).
• Direct advertising and promotion to the places where it will have the most impact.
• Explain to suppliers what they can expect from you in the way of market coverage.
• Verify or challenge what suppliers expect from you in sales.
• Set sales quotas for salespeople, territories or product lines.
• Calculate the number of salespeople needed to cover an area.
• Compare how well salespeople in different territories are doing with the same product on the basis of market potential.
• Back up intuition.
OTHER REALLY USEFUL DATA
In addition to breaking out our national and regional sales potential estimates, the 2026 Market Planning Guide also offers some other great local data that will help offer a clearer picture of the electrical opportunities available: electrical contractor and industrial employment, population growth, construction projects worth at least $100 million in total construction value and building permits.
Electrical Contractor Employment Data
You can use use this employment data with EW's sales-per-employee estimates for electrical contractors of $78,775 per employee to develop contractor sales potential estimates at the local and state level.
You can use use this employment data with EW's sales-per-employee estimates of $2,650 per employee to develop industrial sales potential estimates at the local and state level.
Population Change (2020-2024)
Following population trends is a quick-and-easy way of gauging a market’s local economy. If a market is gaining or losing residents, it obviously affects the tax base, enrollments counts and schools and the need for additional construction for service industries. In our presentation of the U.S. Census Dept.’s 2023 data at the MSA and state level, we map out new-residents-by-day data, which is calculated with the number of folks moving into or out of a local market. It’s a simple calculation that highlights population growth in a fun and easy-to-view manner.
Construction Projects
Electrical work typically accounts for roughly 10% of total construction value of a project, and the construction projects highlighted here offer a sense of the project mix available in a given state or region. Our construction project data was gathered through Oct. 2025. Electrical Marketing newsletter updates its construction project database each quarter, and those updates can be downloaded in a spreadsheet as part of a $99 subscription. Our decision to only include the projects we find of $100 million of more in total contract value is based totally on the bandwidth of the EW staff; we realize that many smaller projects can be even more profitable than larger jobs.
Building Permits
Available monthly from the U.S. Census Bureau on an MSA, state and national level, building permits are a leading indicator of future residential construction because homebuilders typically don’t invest in a permit until they are serious about breaking ground. Permit data is also an early indicator of future nonresidential construction in a local market, because once residential developments go in, the constructions of stores, light commercial and other projects typically follows.
About the Author
Jim Lucy
Editor-in-Chief of Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 40 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter, and as a contributing writer for EC&M magazine During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement.
Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted with his wife and three sons in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 30 years.