Based on their sales growth in 2012, several industries that were hit hard during the Great Recession are making a comeback.

That's according to Sageworks, a Raleigh, N.C.-based financial information company, which recently conducted a financial statement analysis of private companies to identify the fastest growing industries during 2012.

Machinery equipment wholesalers, machine shops, architectural and structural metals manufacturing and industrial machinery manufacturing are among the top 10 fastest growers, according to Sageworks.

“It's possible that those are tied together, as businesses have started to use some of their cash to invest in needed equipment and upgrades,” said Brad Schaefer, Sageworks analyst. “All of those took really big hits in 2009 because companies weren't investing in a lot of equipment.”

Of the other industries in the top 10 strongest growing industries over the last 12 months, several were related to petroleum and other forms of energy, Sageworks discovered. Schaefer noted that the oil boom in the Northwest Plains, increased shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and other operations are providing new opportunities for these companies to expand their drilling operations.

Support activities for mining which includes drilling and making geological observations at prospective mineral, oil and gas sites, grew almost 32% over the last 12 months. Sageworks said the high price of oil during 2012 contributed to 27% revenue growth among petroleum and petroleum product wholesalers and 18% growth among gasoline stations.

Schaefer noted that the increasing dependence U.S. companies have on computers could have contributed to the nearly 18% growth seen by computer systems design and related services during the last 12 months. It might also be a reason why this industry has performed well for the last several years, he added.

“It's been steady since 2010,” Schaefer said of revenue growth for this industry. “Even in 2009, when almost all industries had sales declines, computer systems design grew about 4%, which usually signifies a stable industry.”

Employment services, which grew sales by almost 18% over the last 12 months, are another industry that could have benefited from some of the same revenue drivers, Schaefer said.

“I see the employment services industry doing fairly well again, just because a lot of people are still uncertain about the economy and the political atmosphere, which contributes to businesses hiring temporary or contract workers instead of full-time employees,” he said. “I don't think that's something that'll go away for the next year.”

According to Sageworks, the fastest growing industries (private companies only):

Sageworks said it possesses a proprietary database of privately held company financial statements aggregated by industry. Each day, approximately 1,000 of these financial statements are collected by the company from accounting firms, banks, and credit unions through a cooperative data model with Sageworks clients.