The U.S. Labor Department estimates that there were a total of 1,407,900 workers employed in the printing and publishing industry during April 2002. The industry has lost an estimated 6.6% of its employment base—nearly 100,000 jobs—during the past year, while overall employment in the U.S. has declined by 0.9% over the same period.

April 2002's employment total is the lowest for the printing/publishing industry since October 1984. Between April 2001 and April 2002, newspaper publishing employment fell by 5.0%. Over-the-year employment trends for publishers of magazines/periodicals were even more discouraging, with the April 2002 industry job total down a steep 7.7% from the same month a year earlier.

The commercial printing subsector has fared very poorly as well. Although the percentage job loss (6.9%) wasn't nearly as bad as it was for the book industry, there were more than four times as many people working for commercial printers than for book publishers this spring. Consequently, the actual commercial printing job loss number (37,800 workers) was greater than for any other subsector of printing/publishing. At just over a half-million total workers, commercial printers in the U.S. had fewer employees during April 2002 than at any time since September 1986.