Print’s Darwinian Evolution: Print Professionals

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Necessity is the catalyst for motivation. Unfortunately, a whole lot of print media professionals over the last couple of years have been forced to find the motivation to continue after losing their jobs. Most print shops along with print vendors have been struggling through the recent recession. Printers, among other difficulties, have been affected from the shift in media purchasing. Vendors have been affected doubly, both from buyers reticence to buy and the overall credit crunch. If the overall business cycles were not enough of a squeeze on print media employment figures, consolidation and technology trends have added further pressure. The bottom line is that many highly skilled workers have been displaced.

Sadly, the numbers do not paint a prettier picture for print employment. Take a quick look at the varied sources below that have been in the news recently. Each share the same sentiment that the printing industry and its employment is getting smaller.

• RIT: An Investigation Into Printing Industry Demographics 2009 by Frank Romano and David Broudy
  "The number of printing industry firms has been contracting since 1995, and we project that it will be close to 50 percent of its size in 2015 as compared with 1995." (The number was 60,811 in 1995 and projected at 31,148 by 2015.)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Printing Industry
  "Wage and salary employment in the printing and related support
  activities industry is projected to decline 16 percent over the 2008–18
  period, compared with 11 percent growth projected for the economy as a
  whole."
• Yahoo! HotJobs: 10 Job Sectors in Decline
  "5. Printing and related jobs: Projected to lose 16 percent of its 594,000 jobs."
• What They Think: How Print Industry Employment has Changed Since 2000 by Dr. Joe Webb
  "While the employment data only affirm what we already suspected, we are
  still a large industry that still needs employees; we are still in a
  marketplace with unmet communications needs. Those needs are quite
  different than they used to be, many of them are not print-intensive,
  and that is where the opportunities remain."

Instead of staring in disbelief, perhaps we should rethink our basic preconceptions. A starting point would be  some of the topics found in Dan Miller's 48 Days to The Work You Love. Before you scream heretic, I am not suggesting the answer is to find another job or career path. There are two concepts in Dan's book that should be explored by both printers and print workers:

1. Never stop learning.
2. Do not define the industry, craft, or job in explicit terms such as "I am a printer." Instead think of all the skill sets and knowledge required to be a "printer" and think of how those can be applied to more than printing.