Pro-AV Business Index
March: Demand healthy despite increasing costs
Highlights
The AV Sales Index (AVI-S) for March increased slightly to 59.5, this is consistent with March of 2025. This figure suggests that the underlying demand remains healthy despite the political situation and rising cost concerns.
The most common theme for March is by far increasing costs (21%), including higher prices for AV equipment, components, fuel, shipping, energy, and labor. Many respondents explicitly cite inflation, tariffs, and vendor price increases as directly squeezing margins, delaying purchases, or forcing project scaling and longer replacement cycles. Even organizations reporting stable demand note that profitability and budgeting are under pressure.
The March AV Employment Index (AVI-E) increased from 52.5 to 55.1 in March. The U.S. labor market rebounded in March 2026, adding jobs at a pace well above expectations after a weak February. However, underlying conditions remain subdued, with slow hiring, easing wage growth, and a shrinking labor force signaling a low hire, low fire environment rather than renewed expansion.
International Outlook
The preliminary North American AV Sales Index (AVI S) rose to 68.2 in March, while the non-North America sales index held steady at 61.6. Sales activity remains positive but constrained. Many end users outside North America continue to focus on a “replace and optimize” strategy, prioritizing upgrades and maintenance over large scale greenfield AV projects. Heightened budget scrutiny across corporate, government, and education sectors is limiting the pace of sales acceleration. On the employment side, both the North American AVI E (55.1) and non-North America AVI E (51.2) indicate expansion in March, although gains in faster growing regions are partially offset by slower conditions in parts of Europe and Latin America.
1Due to the small sample, the North American and International indexes are based on a 3-month moving average. The March 2026 index is preliminary, based on the average of March 2026 and February 2026 and will be final with March 2026 data in the next report.
1AVIXA®, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, has published the monthly Pro AV Business Index since September 2016, gauging sales and employment indicators for the pro AV industry. The index is calculated from a monthly survey that tracks trends. Two diffusion indexes are created using the survey: the AV Sales Index (AVI-S) and AV Employment Index (AVI-E). The diffusion indexes are calculated based on the positive response frequency from those who indicated their business had a 5% or more increase in billings/sales from the prior month plus half of the neutral response. An index of 50 indicates firms saw no increase or decline in business activity; more than 50 indicates an increase, while less than 50 indicates a decrease.
Economic conditions affecting our industry are experienced by all of us. Rising fuel costs impact shipping, fleet operation, and personal expense budgets. Equipment and material costs affected by tariffs remain in flux, while our distributors and manufacturers do all that they can to support business opportunities
AV Integrator, Asia-Pacific
Construction projects have dropped off significantly which is greatly impacting potential projects. It has also resulted in a more competitive bidding space which is driving down potential project margins
AV Provider, North America
Hybrid Work & Meeting Technology Demand The shift to hybrid work has significantly increased demand for reliable AV infrastructure. More employees working remotely means conference rooms need seamless video conferencing (Zoom, Teams, Webex), and any downtime directly impacts client meetings, investment team collaboration, and executive presentations. As an AV tech, I've seen tighter scrutiny on equipment refresh cycles, vendor contracts, and staffing levels. Requests for new technology need stronger business justification than before install
End User, North America
Methodology
The survey behind the AVIXA Pro AV Business Index was fielded to 2,000 members of the AVIXA Insights Community between March 26, 2026 and April 6 2026. A total of 269 AV professionals completed the survey. Only respondents who are service providers and said they were “moderately” to “extremely” familiar with their company’s business conditions were factored in index calculations. The AV Sales and AV Employment Indexes are computed as diffusion indexes. The monthly score is calculated as the percentage of firms reporting a significant increase plus half the percentage of firms reporting no change. Comparisons are always made to the previous month. Diffusion indexes, typically centered at a score of 50, are used frequently to measure change in economic activity. If an equal share of firms reports an increase as reports a decrease, the score for that month will be 50. A score higher than 50 indicates that firms, in the aggregate, are reporting an increase in activity that month compared to the previous month. In contrast, a score lower than 50 is a decrease in activity.
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