The Newspaper Industry will Never Recover

Douglas A. McIntyre from Axis of Logic has created a list of ten American Industries that will most likely never return to their heydays, newspapers were listed at number seven on his list.

"It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back or if they
do it will take years or decades for a recovery. 24/7 Wall St. examined the
Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Employment Situation Summary” and a number of
sources that show layoffs by company and sector. The weakness in these sectors
will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to
bring down total unemployment from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost
during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth
in others before there can be any net increase in American employment.

Some of the industries are obvious. Detroit will never employ the number
of people it did five years ago. Domestic car sales hit 16 million in 2005 and
2006. That number will be closer to 11.5 million in 2010. More cars and light
vehicles are made overseas now, in places like Mexico, to keep labor costs down.

Home construction is another industry that will almost certainly not
recover. Home inventories are still extremely high and home prices have fallen
to the levels where they were in 2004. Prices in some markets, which include Las
Vegas, Florida and parts of California have dropped 60% to 70%. New construction
in those markets will not begin again in the foreseeable future".

Click on title or here for the complete list.


7. Newspapers. The layoffs in newspapers began in the 1980s as presses became more automated and tens of thousands of pressmen lost jobs. More recently, the changing habits of news consumption have increased internet readers and hurt print, which has caused more job losses in press rooms. Reporters and editors have lost work as print subscribers have stopped paying for what they can get online for free. One recent study claims that the newspaper industry employee base fell from 767,000 jobs in 1998to 619,000 jobs in 2008. The U.S. Department of Labor has forecast another 120,000 newspaper layoffs over the next 10 years.