Commercial Printing Employment Dipped

Staff -- graphic arts online, 3/1/2001

Estimates from the U.S. Labor Department show that there was a total of 1,562,100 workers employed in the printing and publishing industry during the final month of 2000. This includes both full- and part-time workers, but not others with a more casual attachment to the industry, such as independent contractors, consultants, and freelancers.

The industry added a modest number of new jobs during the past year in sharp contrast to the nation's manufacturing sector as a whole. While overall manufacturing employment fell by 1.0% between 12/99 and 12/00, the payroll count among printing/publishing companies increased by 0.5%. This translated into a total of 7,100 jobs added by the industry over the past year-nothing to write home about, but at least moving in a positive direction.

Not all subsectors of the industry shared in the job gains during 2000, however. Commercial printing firms didn't generate any new jobs last year, as employment fell 0.9% from December-to-December-a loss of 3,400 workers. Printing job gains were strongest last year in companies focused on printing books (4.9%) and periodicals (1.9%). The total numbers of newspaper jobs was little changed between 1999 and 2000, with December 2000 employment levels seen at 1,100 more than in 12/99, a scant 0.2% gain.

The average hourly earnings of production and other non-supervisory workers in printing/publishing firms rose 3.5% between December 1999 and December 2000, up a bit from the 3.1% increase recorded during 1999. The tight labor market pushed employer wage and benefit costs higher during the past year, but with the slowing economy, inflation in employee compensation will be much less a concern to monetary policymakers during 2001, but more a concern to employees themselves.