This year’s Top 50, a group ranked annually by self-reported revenue for the prior calendar year, raked in $1 billion more than they did in 2015. The group, which completed the annual EC&M survey on business conditions, recorded $23.8 billion in electrical and datacom services revenue. That’s up from the $22.8 billion that the 2016 EC&M Top 50 pulled down in 2015, good for a second straight 4.4% gain.

The Top 50’s revenues have grown annually since 2010, when the impact of the financial crisis and recession was most acutely felt. Revenues for that year were $11.9 billion — a painful 10% slide from three years earlier. But since 2010, it’s been nothing but growth. Top 50 revenues grew steadily to reach $15.7 billion in 2013, and then bolted ahead to $21.8 billion in 2014. While some of that growth spurt might have been due to industry consolidation, the big getting bigger and large dollops of backlog clearance, some was surely due to a long-awaited business upturn. After 2014, revenue growth returned to the slow and steady pace seen in the mid-2000s, rising about 4% annually through last year.

Individual Top 50 contractor growth in 2016 was highly variable, likely reflecting at least some individual firm acquisition activity, but also location, size, market specialization, and other company-specific factors. Reported revenue performance for the year ranged from outlier highs of 79%, 52%, and 49% to a handful of declines — the worst being around 20%. For companies reporting growth, a plurality of about 35% logged modest, single-digit gains.

View the 2017 Top 50 Electrical Contractors Table.