Printing and Publishing Output Is Still Waning

January 2002 output from the U.S. printing and publishing industry (as measured by the Federal Reserve Board's monthly survey of industrial production and capacity utilization) was 9.9% less than during the first month of last year. For all of 2001, total industry output had declined by 4.8%, so the much weaker January-to-January trend clearly showed that the market was continuing to contract into the first quarter of 2002. While it's not clear that we've hit bottom yet, it's almost certain this will happen sometime during the first half of 2002.

For full-year 2001, production levels in the newspaper subgroup fell 12.4% short of the total for 2000. The periodicals/books/cards industry subsector fared better, with total 2001 output coming up only 1.4% short of the 2000 level. Meanwhile, 2001 production in the job printing segment of the industry was down 3.3%. As 2001 ended, no sector of printing/publishing was showing signs of an imminent turnaround. Newspaper production levels were 11.9% lower in December 2001 than at year-end 2000, while December-to-December declines for both the periodicals (-8.6%) and job printing (-6.8%) sectors were steeper than those recorded between 2000 and 2001, when viewed on an annual average basis.