Semper’s quarterly printing industry survey results.

Hi, Thanks to all of you who participated. Please find the results of the survey.

Q1 Survey Analysis – January 2009

Thank You again for your responses – this was the first time we posted on twitter and other Social Networks and the response was trebled.

Let us get right to it- WOW. Glad the fourth quarter is over, but the first could be just as interesting.

The highlights: 

Profitability seems to have increased again- clearly this indicates the cost cutting measures and the reduced costs of raw materials and fuel are helping.

The question regarding how you find employees was interesting. Notice that many more of you are using online resources like printworkers.com or Gain’s job bank than help wanted ads in newspapers. I wonder about the reasoning behind that fact, considering the parallel decision our clients must face between print and new media expenditures.

The hiring section – the Staying the same percentage is continually dropping, with laying off increasing but hiring actually started to show an increase. This would indicate that companies top lines are still being squeezed; they lay off but then find they are unable to meet demand when it comes in. So they have to rehire- A shameless plug but this is a classic temp staffing utilization situation.

Again, we suspect the GDP numbers to be released on Jan 30th 09 will have to be revised even in six weeks lower than even the shocking contraction they first indicated. We are glad to see many of you understood the severity of the situation and took the steps needed to reduce costs last quarter.  All the doom and gloom from Davos aside, we feel that the upturn will start sooner than later. The speed of its improvement is the question. It seems that most responded that business was stable  the last two weeks and expected things to stay the same for the quarter. Lets hope we start to see improvement top line wise shortly there after.

The number one concern of respondents was the economy and it’s impact on clients budgets followed by predatory competition for those budgets. The Fed calls that deflation. Let us all hope that trend and fear is fleeting.

We have enclosed the entire Survey results below, if you have questions or would like to see additional areas explored please let me know.

daver@semperllc.com

Survey Charts: CLICK HERE