Going Backwards fast

[Enrique]

"Chicks"? I must be in the wrong shop, ain't no chicks in this one LOL

 

[ondemandbindery]

I will never make the money as I did in 2006 even as a business owner of a small finishing company. This thing has been going backwards for the last 20 years. You may have some degrees of success here and there but if you could compare it to an industry of the 70's I would bet a hotdog the margins today pale in comparison to those of yesterday.........

Something was said in a conversation the other day I got caught up in and it really sums it up. The very same process that has kept the doors of Offset Printers open today for so many shops is the same thing that is going to take them down. DIGITAL! This was from a very successful owner now retired from Printing that started out just about flat broke and junk equipment.

 

[TheProcessIStheproduct]

Don't hate...

Don't hate...

Guy came in looking for a job, kind of entry level skill set, said his quick print boss had just fired him, because when compared to the employers peer group his direct labor costs had been way high, he said he was making $20 hour doing light bindery, I said I would give him a shot at entry level production, but what is your salary requirements... he said I would really like to be making at least $20... I said how about $14? He said, ooh no I would rather just collect unemployment then take that kind of a cut. For that job it does not matter if you are a kid fresh out of high school or you have a PHd from MIT, the JOB pays $10-$14.

 

[ondemandbindery]

Guy came in looking for a job, kind of entry level skill set, said his quick print boss had just fired him, because when compared to the employers peer group his direct labor costs had been way high, he said he was making $20 hour doing light bindery, I said I would give him a shot at entry level production, but what is your salary requirements... he said I would really like to be making at least $20... I said how about $14? He said, ooh no I would rather just collect unemployment then take that kind of a cut. For that job it does not matter if you are a kid fresh out of high school or you have a PHd from MIT, the JOB pays $10-$14.

The printer may have laid him off but he didn't get fired for making too much. $20.00 does sound excessive for light Bindery. But then again I know of one Printer who thinks Bindery people are bottom of the barrel in the industry. I assume at this point the math must work out where he is better off priting jobs over rather than paying the right price for the correct skill set because he does it all the time. I would have taken the job but continue to look for something else. We all know there is no loyalty left in the industry.

 

[Francois]

Basic economics NOT! There is no more basics economics since supply as well as demand can be adjusted and manipulated. All print work, with perhaps the exception of printed art work, ends up being a cost to the final user. That cost is integrated in the pricing make up of the product they sell. However, share holders, private and public, are still being paid dividends. In many instances, your 20% or 40% pay cut contributes to keeping the share holders happy. Unfortunately, it's not just the printing industry.

 

[rbailleu]

Basic economics NOT! There is no more basics economics since supply as well as demand can be adjusted and manipulated. All print work, with perhaps the exception of printed art work, ends up being a cost to the final user. That cost is integrated in the pricing make up of the product they sell. However, share holders, private and public, are still being paid dividends. In many instances, your 20% or 40% pay cut contributes to keeping the share holders happy. Unfortunately, it's not just the printing industry.

this is why I try to buy stock in the companies I do business with. In my case only a handfull are public companies

 

[Servicetech]

Yes they are.

Yes they are.

Hookers aside, I just don't get that my pay has gone down drastically, yet almost everything I have to buy on a regular basis has gone up in price, including the work that I produce, so how does that work, can someone please explain it to me, and where will we all end up, working for nothing?
I can't help but think we are all being royally shafted here, I doubt that plumbers, electricians and other skilled tradesmen are being paid 1990 pay rates!

It's like that all over, I was a field service technician in the printing industry for 21 years, after a large layoff, I was forced to take my skills to another industry, it has worked out well so far, but I was making more money a decade ago, but at least I 'm getting regular raises again.

Electricians, plumbers, and auto mechanics are indeed seeing the same thing, I know some and we are pretty much all in the same boat. Even if someone survived all the massive layoffs they are still worried, because many, many companies are struggling today.

 

[OutSourceD]

June and July 2011 have been the worst two months in 10 years worth of financials I have at my fingertips. I think three things are to blame, the economy, the economy and the economy...

 

[Visualaid]

reading all of this is very discouraging. wow...
so it's not just me then. sounds like i need to get back into web design.

dj said "(I was in prepress for about 15 years. Technician, applications specialist, then project manager... then after layoff... consultant.
Three years I decided enough was enough and switched careers. I learned how to build websites and sucked up all I could glean about internet marketing: Google Adwords, email marketing, tracking sales conversions
I now have so much work on my hands, I barely have time to run down to the ATM and deposit my big hefty paycheques.
Just get the hell out of printing. It's not you. It's the industry.)"

 

[OutSourceD]

I think someone might be laying this on kind of thick. I design websites and offer SEO as well. Those customers are every bit as cheap and tight with a dime if not more so.

 

[BeauchampT]

My father worked in a totally differnet industry (steam plant operator on ships). When he switched to land work (a power plant), he was doing more work for almost half the pay. A few years later he had to switch to another job (still as a steam plant engineer), at a paper mill; still lower wage. In fact, when he had to manage his crew for a while, his pay raise was a whopping $0.03/hr. Oooo, big opportunity.

Every single industry is falling apart, and yet, we still spend as much as before. Take Canada - our annual income as a nation is less than our annual expenditure. Average person in Canada spends 110% of their income. Oh yeah, absolutely genius that. We are as much of the problem as the economy. We are the economy.

 

[Servicetech]

Getting out of the printing industry has been a very good decision thus far, I now work in an automated food plant.

After my initial layoff from my career in the printing industry, I was out of work for 5 days before I accepted a much lower paying job at an electrical manufacturing company, pay was considerably lower but it beat what unemployment pays (peanuts) plus it had health benefits. Plus I can show on my resume that I am driven to work and not go on unemployment.

Now I'm at a major food manufacturer that values employees who perform and I am climbing my way back up the pay scale.

 

[chevalier]

There seems to be a very negative outlook here. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur and own my own place. Call me crazy but I was proceeding doing that in 2009 until a better opportunity came along at the last minute. That project remains on the back-burner as improving technology make it even more feasible. Even in this restructuring global economy there are still ways where money can be made including printing.

The economy that existed between 2002 and 2008 was a false economy driven by horrendous economic policy and hard-to-grasp global trade imbalances. That mix will probably (and hopefully) not return for at least a hundred years or until it is nearly completely extinguished from living memory. Anyone wanting or expecting those kinds of returns, loose cash and loose credit is either loony or a pirate.

The falling (real) wages Canadian, American and Western European workers are experiencing is centrally due to a global rebalancing of trade. The whole "free" trade concept "levels" the playing field between the developing economies and developed economies. I should state that i'm not a communist, socialist, capitalist, nationalist, or racist. I'm not ideological about this stuff.

Economic explanation (I used China and America out of convenience but this applies globally):
China has excessive amounts of very cheap labor and America does not. Chinese people want to eat and prosper. The Chinese have more people than they know what to do with (over-saturated labor market). Regulations like minimum wage, mandatory health insurance, OSHA regulation are either nonexistent or unenforced. The living standard for a worker is lower. When we eliminated (and continue to) trade barriers (tariffs, quotas, minimize inspection of imports, etc.) it forces American workers to compete with their Chinese counterparts. The result is decreasing American wages and/or automation of processes that were once done by a worker. It also raises the wages of Chinese workers but the Chinese government has minimized and prevented that through currency manipulation. The end-game of this balancing is where an American wage (including benefits) and a Chinese wage (including benefits) for the same job will be roughly the same. This is good for humanity as a whole but it sucks to be an American because lifestyle will never be as good as it once was. It also means work-harder and get paid less in real money. These economic forces have been unleashed and cannot be contained without truly sliding backwards into trade warfare and possibly even bullets and bombs warfare.

I cannot make it any more clear that the days of showing up and doing your job in the Western world and getting a 2% or greater real raise year over year is over. This market trend is not only happening now but it will accelerate once Africa and South America light up red hot like Asia has over the past 20-30 years. There are nearly 7 billion people on this rock now and only around 1 billion of those are North Americans and Europeans. The earth and it's resources are finite and competition decides who gets what, when and where. I could droll on for hours about this.

It isn't all bad for those who live in already developed economies. I have prospered and plan to keep prospering. I've done it by constantly updating my skill sets, applying intelligence, being mobile (willingness/ability to move), and I have had a bit of luck. I have increased my wage >250% in the past 5 years. This in what I hope will be the worst economic conditions I ever have to live through. I do not work for myself and I do not have a college degree or any certifications.

 

[chevalier]

I cannot make it any more clear that the days of showing up and doing your job in the Western world and getting a 2% or greater real raise year over year is over. This market trend is not only happening now but it will accelerate once Africa and South America light up red hot like Asia has over the past 20-30 years. There are nearly 7 billion people on this rock now and only around 1 billion of those are North Americans and Europeans. The earth and it's resources are finite and competition decides who gets what, when and where. I could droll on for hours about this.

Read this today...
Interview with China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs: 'The West Has Become Very Conceited' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

From the interview:
"Many say that power is shifting from the West to the East, but we believe that it is a process of diffusion. It used to be within the Western world, but now it is also diffusing to a wider world. There is a need to reform the current world structure, which was built after World War II to the benefit of around 1 billion people of the developed world. China is only one of the newly emerging countries. Brazil is growing. India is growing, as are parts of Africa. In the future, 3 to 4 billion people will be coming into this process of wider industrialization. But that reform needs to be an incremental process that is achieved not through war and not through conflict, but through dialogue."
-Fu Ying, Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs