Wow! This article causes me to rethink many of my preconceptions about marketing communications. Employment of marketing communications professionals inside corporations seems to have declined in my perception. Now I wonder if that's really true, and if it is, if that's offset by growth in advertising agencies. The demand for content has certainly never been greater but where is all this expansion in content going to get us? Pay for journalists and copywriters is still abysmal, and now it looks like we're headed to a bust, in my opinion.
BoSacks Heard on the Web - Media Intelligence: Desktop Publishing's Legacy: 230,000 Fewer Commercial Printing Workers, and An Explosion in Content Creation Workers, 2008-Aug-7, by Dr. Joe Webb
Desktop publishing reduced the costs of production and stimulated the content creation process, and was a critical component of the march of new media. In 1987 ... about 52,000 employees worked in graphic design firms then, with another 4000 or so as freelancers. Today, there are 73,000 employees in graphic design firms, plus another 90,000 freelancers, more than three times 1987's level. Even advertising employment is higher. There are 40,000 more workers in advertising than in 1987.
Commercial printing employment is now at 1987 levels, while publishing, design, and agencies have added more than 250,000 workers in the last 20 years. Not all of them are creative workers, of course. Without the ability to create content efficiently, however, even those workers who are not in content creation or content production positions owe their jobs to the creation process that is the reason for their employer's existence.
