Industry Snapshot

We are pleased to announce the new “Industry Snapshot” page of the WhatTheyThink.com Economics and Research Center. It is a collection of regularly updated industry data about shipments and various measures of business activity. Note: The spreadsheet below is a live feed. Any changes made to it are presented here as they happen. More info below.

More about the WhatTheyThink.com Economics and Research Center's "Industry Snapshot":

Each data category compares the current period with the prior data and also the prior year. You'll also see when the newest data will be available.

Most of the data series are from public sources, which we have documented on the “sources” page. Each of the sources is a live link to the data provider, such as the Commerce Department, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and others. In some cases, we have added proprietary data series, such as our adjustments for inflation or other characteristics.

For the commercial printing industry, we track shipments, capacity, profits, inflation, employment, and trade.

Mail shipments in pieces and total weight data as reported by the U.S. Postal Service are also available for several classes of mail.

On the demand side, we report employment in the publishing, advertising, and graphic design industries, which have always been a good indicator of future commercial print shipments.

For the paper and packaging industries, you can find shipments, employment, and capacity data.

Commercial printing shipments for Canada are also reported on a current-dollar, inflation-adjusted, and U.S. exchange rate-adjusted basis.

For your convenience, each item that is updated is marked with an “x” in the column labeled “new.”  Right now, every item is marked that way, but the next time we update, you'll be able to identify new items that have been updated in the past week quite easily.

These data will be regularly enhanced and new categories will be added. We hope that you become a regular user of these data.

For those of you who want to download the data, simply highlight the part of the table that you want, copy it, and then paste in your favorite spreadsheet program.

Please contact us if you want to purchase historical data series that are highlighted here. Most of the data have more than five years' history, with most of them well beyond that. In many cases, we have only the “top level” or most aggregate level of data in this table. For many of the data series we have more detailed and segmented data in our archives. We can also run any of the data series through our various forecasting programs on a private basis at a nominal fee.

Thank you again for your continuing interest in the WTT Economics and Research Center. Please contact us with suggestions and comments about how we can make this service more valuable to you.

Dr. Joe Webb, Director
WhatTheyThink.com Economics & Research Center