Business Management – Market Research

According to a new study, the number of government in-plants using conventional printing equipment has declined steadily in recent years. Lithography now accounts for less than 30 percent of the printing produced in house.

INTERQUEST, a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry, today announced the release of Digital Production Printing in the Federal Government: Market Update.

A new report on the in-plant industry shows a 2.5 percent decline in establishments between 2006 and 2007, and estimates a grand total of 52,078 in-plants in the U.S.

The report, released in February, was based on research conducted by InfoTrends, a market research and consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry. It points to a large growth in digital printing at in-plants, particularly digital color printing. In a 2004 InfoTrends survey, 63 percent of respondents offered digital color printing services; in 2008 nearly 86 percent said they offered it. Black-and-white digital printing has grown from 71 percent of respondents offering it in 2004 to more than 85 percent last year.

While the printing industry has been hit hard by the economic downturn, it is by no means alone. Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, & Orders report, printing was one of 10 major manufacturing groups in which shipments fell in 2008. However, printing’s 3.9 percent decline for the year was not the worst, points out NAPL's Printing Economic Research Center (PERC). Seven other industries recorded steeper declines, with textile products (-12.3 percent) and transportation equipment (-10.3 percent) topping the list. Total manufacturing shipments were up 2 percent for the year.

The salaries of in-plants managers in the Manufacturing and Wholesale/Retail industries are among those that have risen sharply in the past two years. This is according to IPG's biennial in-plant salary survey, the results of which will be published in our February issue.

According to data collected from 424 in-plant managers, the industries that increased their managers' salaries the most are manufacturing (up $29,537 over the average 2007 salary), wholesale/retail (up $23,512), religious (up $20,067), health care (up $15,893), non-profit (up $13,562) and school districts (up $8,674).

AS THE economy continues its downward plummet, many of you have already been told to put off your dreams of a pay raise until next year. In fact, 17.2 percent of the respondents to our biennial in-plant salary survey already suffered a 2008 pay freeze. Still, overall salaries climbed more than 11.4 percent since 2007, compared to a 10.6 percent increase of 2007 pay over 2005. Our 2009 salary survey, conducted in early January, pulled in an impressive 424 usable responses. From these we have calculated average salaries in a number of different categories—data you can present to your supervisors (when the time is right).

The commercial printing business is not likely to experience any meaningful improvement until well into the second half of 2009. That's the latest prediction from NAPL, the National Association for Printing Leadership.

NAPL’s Printing Economic Research Center notes that this economic downturn is different than previous recessions, because the industry is changing structurally as well as cyclically and, therefore, stronger and more creative responses are required by today’s printers.

Our recent survey of insurance company in-plants may not have drawn a record response (just 28) but those who did reply run some very large operations. A third of them have more than 50 full-time employees. The median number of employees is 14 and the average is 50.

Attention catalogers who have changed the shape of your books or are considering doing so within the next year: Beware! Changing your catalog shape to qualify for automation letter postage rates may save money in the short term, but it can cost more in the long term. That’s because the U.S. Postal Service is in the process of conducting tests on a variety of design characteristics. Within the next year, its rules will change significantly and may wipe out the slim-jim savings. And it’s not just about the shape. The USPS also is looking into changing rules concerning mailing materials, thickness, tabbing requirements and

Though our new survey of government in-plants offers a good picture of this market segment, the data is even more illuminating when viewed next to the results of an industry-wide survey conducted by IPG earlier this year. For the most part, government in-plants match the trends we see among all in-plants, but there are several areas where government printers excel. More of them are providing digital printing (97%) than in the in-plant industry at large (90.6%), and more government printers handle data center/IT printing (33% vs. 18.7%). Also, more of them have computer-to-plate (CTP) systems (74% vs. 53.2%) and color printers