Printing/Publishing Output Up This Year

Staff -- graphic arts online, 12/1/2000

The Federal Reserve Board estimates that overall printing and publishing industry production was 2.1% higher during the third quarter of this year than over the July-through-September period of 1999, a gain that comes on the heels of two consecutive years of declining output from the nation's printing/publishing sector.

Newspaper industry output has grown more slowly than the other subsectors of printing/publishing. Still, following output gains of 1.3% in 1998 and 0.9% last year, the 1.6% increase in newspaper production levels during the most recent 12 months represents some modest improvement in market conditions.

Production in the job printing industry component this September was an estimated 0.3% higher than during September 1999. But prices for the first three quarters of 2000 as a whole in this industry group have averaged 0.3% less than over the same nine months of 1999.

The periodicals/books/cards industry subsector fared by far the best of all printing/publishing subsectors over the first three quarters of 2000. For the first nine months of this year, average prices received for products coming out of this industry group were running 5.5% above their 1999 level.