Author Archive

Offshoring and the Decline of Manufacturing Jobs in the US

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

This is a response to a letter written earlier this year to Plant Engineering magazine regarding the loss of manufacturing jobs and plants. The author of the letter to comments on the decline of press manufacturing in the U.S., especially at Goss. Blaming this on offshore competition is rather strange. Since ...

WhatTheyThink Economic Outlook Webinar

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Be sure to sign up for Wednesday's webinar, where we'll be sorting through the the latest news and trends with our outlook for 2008, and sometimes beyond. This time of year is usually the end of business planning cycles for companies that operate under a calendar fiscal year, and the ...

Google’s April Fools Post Says More than Its Obvious Amusing Intent

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Ok, when I saw the intro page for their April Fools joke, about "Gmail Paper," I thought it might make some sense because I actually remember when you could send a letter through AOL that they would print and mail for you. AOL discontinued that sometime around 1997 or so, ...

January 2007 Printing Shipments +$343 million

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

January 2007 was a good month for commercial printing shipments, up $343 million on a current dollar basis compared to January 2006. December shipments were revised up by yet another $12 million. This represents nine consecutive months of positive comparisons to the prior year. Current dollar shipments were up +4.9%. On ...

U.S. Commercial Printing Shipments Up 8 Consecutive Months

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

December was a good month for the printing industry, with current dollar shipments up +$534 million, or +6.6%. November's shipments were revised up by +$43 million as well. The strong close to the year meant that the industry was up almost +$1.6 billion compared to 2005, an increase of +1.7%, ...

GDP up +3.5% in Q4-2006

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

I was expecting GDP to be no more than +3%. The official press release is online. GDP for 2006 was 3.4%. In perspective, it was 3.2% in 2005, and 3.9% for 2004. The Fed meets today and they have two things to look at. First, Q4 was stronger than anticipated, holding ...

Headline Malpractice

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

An outrageously misleading headline came out last week, and of course, it was picked up by numerous print and broadcast media. It was about media industry layoffs. "Planned media job cuts up 88 pct in 2006" it said, which reporters picked up because 1) it was about them, and 2) ...