So how’s the patient doing? After many years of bad news and obituaries, followed by some resuscitation and encouraging prognoses, where does the commercial printing industry stand today? What shape is it in? There is a little more sweeping analysis than The Industry Measure’s annual “Graphic Arts Markets Demographic Profiles” report, the 2007 version of which was released within the last few weeks.

While the report covers the major U.S. Census data, as well as The Industry Measure demographics and major industry trends in the printing, creative, and publishing marketplaces, we have space to look only at printers and trade shops here.

It will be no surprise to anyone that the number of printing establishments continues to drop - in fact, we lost another 10% between January 2004 - April 2006 - optimism has recovered to its pre-2001 levels. In spite of this general attitudinal recovery, however, the most recent Printing survey (#24) continues a gradual four-survey decline. Not a dramatic drop, but a noticeable one - from a level of 79.03 to 73.86 over a six-month period.