If you have been reading Electrical Wholesaling’s annual picks for the nation’s hottest metros over the past few years, you have heard all about how the state of Texas and the Dallas and Houston MSAs rank near the top of all sorts of economic growth metrics, including population increases and building permits.
That won’t change in 2026, as the two cities are ranked #1 and #2 in single-family building permits; and are ranked in the Top 5 in multi-family building permits; have seen their population increase a total of 1.3 million new residents from 202-2024. The two cities saw population growth on a grand scale in 2024, with more than 300 new residents moving into each city every day.
Texas is also home to a broad mix of new construction projects in the pipeline valued at more than $1 billion in total contract value. These projects include the $18.7-billion Matrix data center campus now underway in Sulfur Springs, TX; the $5.1-billion Woodside Louisiana LNG facility being built in Sulphur, TX; the $3-billion Mix development that broke ground in Frisco, TX; billion-dollar airport terminal projects underway in Dallas and San Antonio and the $1.6-billion Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital Replacement in Houston.
There’s also a ton of industrial work in the pipeline along the Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, including plans for the $25-billion Monkey Island llc investment in Louisiana LNG plant n Cameron Parish, LA; the $12-billion Formosa Plastics Sunshine Project in Saint James, LA, now in the planning stage; and the $10-billion 2 gigawatt data center campus eta has planned for Richland Parish, LA.
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
Over the past 40-plus years, hundreds of Jim’s articles have been published in Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter on topics such as the impact of amazonsupply.com and other new competitors on the electrical market’s channels of distribution, energy-efficient lighting and renewables, and local market economics. In addition to his published work, Jim regularly gives presentations on these topics to C-suite executives, industry groups and investment analysts.
He recently launched a new subscription-based data product for Electrical Marketing that offers electrical sales potential estimates and related market data for more than 300 metropolitan areas, and in 1999 he published his first book, “The Electrical Marketer’s Survival Guide” for electrical industry executives looking for an overview of key market trends.
While managing Electrical Wholesaling’s editorial operations, Jim and the publication’s staff won several Jesse H. Neal awards for editorial excellence, the highest honor in the business press, and numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (now Rowan University).