Last November, the latest edition of the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns was released, which provides establishment counts and other data up to 2017. Our favorite NAICS code—323 (Printing and Related Support Activities)—came in at 25,256 establishments (down from 25,521 in 2016). As is always the case, small establishments dominate—seven out of 10 have fewer than 10 employees, and only 7% have 50 or more.
In 2018, we began highlighting data from our Commercial Printing Establishments, which complements and supplements our regular tracking of printing industry shipments and other industry data. These counts are based on data from the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns. Throughout this year, we will be updating these data series with the latest CBP figures. County Business Patterns includes other data, as well, such as number of employees, payroll, etc. These counts are broken down by commercial printing business classification (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)
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.
In addition to establishments, we will be breaking establishment and other CBP data down in different ways.
