Last month, we launched our new Commercial Printing Establishmentswhich slices and dices industry establishments by business classification and employee count. In previousinstallmentsof this data series, we looked at total printing establishments (NAICS 323–“All Printing and Related Support Activities”). This week, we look at a subset of commercial printing—book printers (NAICS 323117). In 2010, there were 536 U.S. book printing establishments, a count which had declined to 421 (-21%) by 2016, despite a brief upward spurt in 2013. A decline of one-fifth might sound drastic, especially compared to overall commercial printing establishments (the all-inclusive NAICS 323 declined -12% over this same period). What’s happening with book printers? Part of it is just the nature of the numbers: there are so few establishments in this category that even a decline of a few establishments can translate to a large percentage, magnifying the effect. At the same time, there has been the old story of consolidation, and some of it may be the result of shop diversification; today’s equipment (production inkjet in particular) can produce a variety of print products, so shops don’t have to stick to any one particular niche the way they used to. So some quantity of “book printers” may not consider themselves just book printers, and thus they classify as general commercial printers—or some other business classification that better describes the business.
The data in this chart is gleaned from our which complements and supplements our regular tracking of printing industry shipmentsand other industry data. Based on data from the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns, we present—in spreadsheet form—U.S. commercial printing establishments from 2010 to 2016, including establishment counts for six commercial printing business classifications (based on NAICS, the North American Industrial Classification System):
- 323 (Printing and Related Support Activities)
- 32311 (Printing)
- 323111 (Commercial Printing, except Screen and Books)
- 323113 (Commercial Screen Printing)
- 323117 (Books Printing)
- 32312 (Support Activities for Printing—aka prepress and postpress services)
We further break these counts down by establishment size:
- 1–4 employees
- 5–9 employees
- 10–19 employees
- 20–49 employees
- 50–99 employees
- 100–249 employees
- 250–499 employees
- 500–999 employees
- 1000 employees
These data, and the overarching year-to-year trends, like other demographic data, can be used not only for business planning and forecasting, but also sales and marketing resource allocation.
Every other week, we will be breaking these establishment data down in different ways. Over time, we will be adding additional data from the County Business Patterns, such as number of employees, payroll, and similar information for additional business classification of relevance to the graphic communications industry.
