Commercial Printing Outlook: Forecasting a U-turn

The bad news: The latest estimate from the Blue Chip Economic Indicators report still calls for the GDP rate to be down 2.5 percent in 2009, Paparozzi continues. "That is the largest single-year decline in GDP since 1946."

Printing industry sales for 2009 should come in somewhere between -14 percent to -16 percent, more likely closer to -16 percent, adds the chief economist. "That's on top of a 4 percent decline last year. We're looking at a 20.6 percent decrease (in printing sales) from the peak in the second half of 2007 through September 2009."