At the end of last year, in our Fall 2016 Economics and Research Center survey and subsequent Forecast 2017 report, we had found that the printing industry experienced a bit of a renaissance in 2016, that revenues, jobs, and profits were up and that there was substantial optimism as we headed into 2017. 

As we looked at the rosy expectations for 2017, we had advised caution, and it turns out for good reason. In our new 2017 Mid-Year Report and 2018 Preview, based on a survey conducted in June, Dr. Joe Webb and I found that the first half of 2017 has not been spectacular compared to the first half of 2016. Indeed, when we calculated the average changes in revenues, jobs/orders, and profits, in none of those three areas did we see increases higher than 2%. In some establishment size categories, we even saw average decreases, though they were very small. None of these data foretell an industry apocalypse—although the Commerce Department’s value of shipments data suggest that this will be the worst year for the industry in...well, ever, perhaps.

Still, the fact that in our June survey shops across the board cited “increasing plant productivity” as a top challenge and “workflow automation software” as a top planned investment suggests that these businesses are in fact rather busy (although beware of “survivor bias”), and that managing the workload is a significant issue for them. This is largely thanks to the nature of digital work vs. offset work; the dual challenges with digital work is a) amassing enough short-run jobs to compensate for what a long-run offset job would have brought in, and, b) streamlining production to get that amassed number of digital jobs in and out as quickly as possible.