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. In January, we began updating our data series starting with 323 (Printing and Related Support Activities).
This week, we look at book printing establishments (NAICS 323117), and in 2017 there were 500 total US book printers. Under two-thirds of these establishments (63%) had fewer than 10 employees, but almost one-fifth (17%) had more than 50 employees. Compare this with commercial printers in general (71% under 10, 7% over 50) and we see that book printers tend to be slightly larger establishments than average.
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.
