This feels like a goofy article to be writing. As a printer, I should be in favor of higher prices. As a person, however, I feel the angst and I understand how printing could just look like another runaway pricing model. But what if I told you that this printing pricing has an interesting backstory?
What are the current prices?
While you’re likely familiar with the high year-over-year general inflation rates since COVID in 2021, each industry contributes its own specific rate to that. Here’s what the Printing Industry looks like:
This graph is taken from the official Economic Data of the US Printing Industry, and measures price changes relative to their initial levels taken in 2004. It shows that by 2021 the prices had crept up about 15% over the preceding 15 years, however in 2022 the pricing exploded. What gives?
2020: the year that changed printing for good.
In 2020 paper suppliers retooled to adapt their products to the needs of the market that the pandemic ushered in. To retool a commercial manufacturing assembly line is a huge cost outlay. It’s not something that any manufacturer of anything will do on a whim. Many of the suppliers of commercial paper switch to producing paper towels, toilet paper (remember the TP war of 2020?), wet wipes, etc. This made lots of sense because of the rush for all these products during the pandemic. Meanwhile printing like every other industry was hollowed out as demand and production halted.
What you don’t know is that the whole printing industry had already been ransacked by the double-whammy of the 2008 recession and the rise of the internet and computing. Many printers made their money on business forms like invoices that were suddenly all digitized. The amount of businesses consuming paper products for mundane documents plummeted from 2000 onward. And then, in 2008 times got tough and printers were forced to compete for printing marking materials like booklets in a shrinking industry during a recession. So, why is printing so expensive now? Because the thing that supported the industry was low paper prices and cheap labor, but after COVID both those things were gone.
In the opinion of the paper producers, they had been supporting the commercial print industry. They could’ve always made more money selling toilet paper and paper towels, but not quite enough to justify converting their assembly lines. But with demand for disposable sanitary products at all time highs, and the printing industry in shambles, in 2020 many paper producers turned their back on commercial paper indefinitely.
Will printing prices ever go down?
Not independently; no. That is to say, that if the economy is in recession everything will correct, including printing. But for printing ‘high’ prices are the new normal, as COVID shut out many competitors in the paper industry and small businesses in the printing industry. So, the printing price increases are justified. And in some ways printing prices were suppressed in the 2010s, and cut out of the economic recovery during that time.
Is there price-gouging? No, and I’m getting exhausted of certain politically-driven messaging that high prices are the result of price gouging. There is a shortage of certain labor categories. There are fewer paper suppliers now than their were. Transportation costs are higher. And frankly, people are still buying. As long as we’re collectively parting with our money for a good or a service while there is competition present it is not price gouging to ask for more money than in the past. A good will always seek to be priced according to what the market can bear.