Specialties Bindery — A Cut Above

A Tight Labor Market
Specialties Bindery is located in Maryland's Prince George's County, which has a current unemployment rate of only 2.9 percent. Finding qualified employees outside of Prince George's is even tougher. Anne Arundel, a neighboring county, is at 2.2 percent unemployment and Montgomery is at a mere 1.4 percent unemployment. Although the company would like to increase its labor force, Brenda Slacum isn't counting on it. "Realistically, our growth will come from investments in automation and better, in-line solutions," she says. "For example, we're in the process of upgrading some of our collating equipment, which should allow us to divert $300,000 of annualized labor to other areas."