What did we say last month—“this year just keeps getting better and better”? Well, all good things must come to an end, so they say. We were expecting a slowdown in printing shipments in November, but were hoping it wouldn’t be this bad. Shipments came in at a dismal $7.35 billion, down quite substantially from October’s $8.20 billion. Looking at the seasonal pattern, we should gird our loins for December shipments and hope for a rebound in January. 

We are working through the results of our Fall Business Outlook Survey as we prepare our Printing Outlook 2025 report and we find that earlier in the year business has been great in terms of jobs/revenues—the items that contribute to shipments—but various mitigating factors such as employee costs, inflation, etc., have not let profitability follow suit.

January to November shipments are at $82.00 billion, still a bit short of 2023’s $82.70 billion. Unless we have a miraculous December, it looks like 2024 will fall a bit short of 2023, shipmentswise.