Content creation is in a strong uptrend based on the latest employment data. Graphic design employment is up +6%, and has taken over from public relations employment as the surging area of hiring. Ad agenices, excluding public relations employment, is up +3.1% since last year. What's happening in periodicals and newspapers? We'd rather not say, but the employment levels there are back to mid-1980s and late 1940s, respectively, so we'll just leave it at that.

Printing employment is in a slow decline (-1.3%), likely the effect of consolidation forces, production employment is down slightly (-0.6%), but supervisory employment is down -2.9%. This supports the data trend where printing shipments have been rising (with near-stability of production personnel) and revenues per employee have set a new inflation-adjusted high (with consolidation's downsizing of administrative staffs). We'll know more about these measures next week, when the revised industry shipments for recent years will be released.