Sometimes business trends can be found not in the annual reports and updates from listed companies and other in industry sectors, but in figures as arcane as employment trends – especially over a long period of time.
For the past 25 years the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking employment trends in a host of industries – highlighting gains and losses which in turn tell us of the winners and losers from changes in consumer demand, technology (“digital disruption”) or the rise of new players with more aggressive business plans.
But the greatest influence in the past quarter of a century has been technological change in the form of the rise of all things digital – the internet, smartphones, streaming video services, ebooks and online bookstores/retailers, business to business, FinTech, and perhaps the most disruptive of all, social media platforms and mobile technologies best seen in the shape of Facebook.
Nowhere has the damage been greatest than in print – newspapers, magazines and book publishing. And nowhere has the impact been positive but in internet, online video and movie production. TV hasn’t escaped either – from free to air to cable where employment has stuttered and turned down in recent years.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (which produces the monthly jobs report and associated analysis) last Thursday published its latest assessment of media employment trends over the past quarter of a century, and the look is not good for newspapers, book publishing, radio and magazines.
But it confirmed the continuing good news for all things online, social media, video and movies, all the sectors established media companies such as News Corp, sought to combine and dominate for perceived ’synergies’ but failed and have all but now abandoned.
It’s not for nothing that Disney and Comcast have become the biggest media groups in the world (with the sprawling media investments and companies of John Malone’s Liberty group of companies) – they have avoided print for decades, concentrating on video, film and allied media forms (cable etc).
"Few industries have been affected by the digital or information age as much as newspapers and other traditional publishing industries (books, magazines, etc.). In June 1990, there were nearly 458,000 people employed in the newspaper publishing industry; by March 2016, that figure had fallen to about 183,000, a decline of almost 60 percent. Over the same period, employment in Internet publishing and broadcasting rose from about 30,000 to nearly 198,000,” the BLS said.
“Two other industries similarly affected by the digital age and the advent of the Internet are radio broadcasting, where employment declined from January 1990 to March 2016 by about 27 percent, and motion picture and video production, where employment rose from about 92,000 to 239,000 over the same period, an increase of nearly 162 percent.”
But it’s the size of the fall in newspaper employment that is startling – the drop was from 458,000 in 1990 to around 183,000 in March of this year. That is a fall of around 275,000 people.
So given the job losses over the past 25 years, why do US colleges and universities continue to churn out thousands of graduates from their journalism and media courses each year?
That’s printers, publishers, journalists and their assistants, advertising and other back office employees. The losses have been sweeping and at times heartbreaking
Employment in internet publishing and online broadcasting rose from about 30,000 to nearly 198,000 between 1990 and March this year and now exceeds employment in newspapers.
That was an increase of around 160,000. What really stands out is the surge from 2008 onwards in this sector when employment was around 80,000. That’s a rise of 147% in 8 years.
Why the surge, especially from 2008? Well, the introduction of the iPhone the year before (and later the tablet) and rivals smartphones and tablets from other phone companies, and the rise of Facebook, then Twitter and other social media platforms which in turn sparked the rise of mobile communications and platforms.
The rise of smartphones and tablets and platforms such as Facebook, and lately, streaming video (think Netflix) has helped power the 162% jump in employment in motion pictures and video content.
The damage to book publishing the slow rise of Amazon and other online book groups can be seen from the employment data. From 85,800 people in 1990, employment had fallen 28% to 61,500 in March of this year. But book publishing employment actually peaked in June 1997 at 91,100 people, so the size of the fall to March this year is close to a third.
There was also a noticeable lurch downwards in 2009 when employment fell 10% in a year. Employment in TV has risen by only 14.7%, from 113,900 to 130,400. Magazine publishing saw a 36% slide in employment to 93,600 in March of this year, from 146,400 in 1990.
In Australia there are nothing similar to this sort of breakdown over time. But it is clear from the recent announcements and the share prices of Fairfax media, Seven West Media, News Corp, Southern Cross, APN News and Media, Prime Media and Ten that very similar forces are at work here, and are probably more advanced.
All the local moves in recent years have been aimed at cutting costs (News Corp is closing seven local papers in Melbourne this month, APN is selling off its Australian and NZ newspapers, Fairfax wants to combine its Kiwi papers with those of APN). These forces are remorseless and won’t ease up.
