Preliminary results for March 2012 for NAICS 42361 (“wholesale trade, electrical equipment & wiring”) round out the first quarter’s employment picture for U.S. electrical distributors. There’s a slight uptick of employment over the past 51 months, as shown in the graphic below.
Above: Graphic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website. Employment in NAICS 42361 from January 2008 to March 2012.
Below are the numbers for the year’s first three months, with 2008 (pre-recession) thrown in for comparison:
| 2008 | 2011 | 2012 | |
| January | 156,100 | 138,200 | 141,200 |
| February | 154,500 | 137,500 | 139,600 |
| March | 154,300 | 137,800 | 139,800 |
Compared to last year, employment was 3,000 higher in January, 2,100 higher in February, and precisely 2,000 higher (+1.45%) in March. The drop from 2008 to 2012, as of March, was 9.4%.
The graphic below, with the same time scale as the electrical distributor graphic above, shows employment in all of wholesaling (industrial distributors and non-industrial), according to the BLS.
Above: Graphic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. Employment in all of U.S. wholesaling from January 2008 to March 2012.
Employment for April is included in the data above; the BLS will provide electrical distributor numbers for April next month. Here are the numbers for March of each of the years delineated above:
- March 2008: 5,980,900 people employed in wholesaling.
- March 2011: 5,478,900
- March 2012: 5,563,400
From 2008 to 2011, the drop—more than 500,000 employees—was 8.4%. As of March 2012, the year-to-year bounce was 1.54%.
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