Commercial Print Prices Weaker Than Average

Overall inflation in the printing/publishing industry (i.e. average prices charged for the output of the industry, as measured in the Labor Department's monthly Producer Price Index survey) remained surprisingly high last year, even as wholesale and consumer prices for a large number of items across the economy were flat to down during 2001.

After increasing by 3.0% between 1999 and 2000 (an acceleration in inflation from the 2.4% average increase recorded over the prior three years), the producer price index measure specifically covering the printing/publishing industry was 3.1% higher, on average, in 2001 than during 2000.

Average periodicals/magazine publishing output prices rose at a 4.5% rate during 2001 after increasing by a more moderate 2.7% the year before. Average prices received by book publishers (2.8%) and the greeting card segment of the industry (1.4%) rose more slowly.

Prices in the commercial printing subsector of the industry, on the other hand, were only 0.1% higher this January than during January 2001. Within the lithographic subgroup of commercial printing, prices increased sharply only for the labels/wrappers (5.4%) product group. And although the prices charged by magazine publishers themselves rose sharply during the past year, the prices received by commercial printers for actually producing the product were 4.0% lower in January 2002 than during the first month of last year.