Supplementary written evidence submitted
by Enders Analysis
First, some context in terms of media employment
generally. The following employee numbers are for UK media (some
of these figures are Enders Analysis estimates).
| BBC | 21,500
|
| Commercial Radio | 7,000 |
| Commercial TV | 41,000 |
| UK National Press | 26,000 |
| UK Regional Press | 42,000 |
| UK Mags | 25,000 |
| UK B2B Media | 29,000 |
| Directories | 20,000 |
| Ad Agencies | 100,000 |
| Distribution & ancilliary services |
80,000 |
| Total | 391,500
|
| Press | 202,667 |
| Broadcast | 69,500 |
| Advertising | 100,000 |
| Exhibitions and other b2B non-print | 19,333
|
| Total | 391,500
|
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Press represents more than 50% of total UK media employment
at about 200,000 people. Newspapers alone directly employ
68,000 people, and at the end of Q1 2009 we estimate
6,000 newspaper staff had been made redundant during the
previous 12 months. While things have been relatively quiet
in recent weeks we expect another flurry of redundancies later
in the year. Our belief is that newspaper publishers continue
to assume that revenues will bottom out and return, while our
belief is that any "recovery" will be brief and slight.
Until last year, employment in national papers had been steadily
rising, and even in local newspapers the figures held relatively
steady, due to the resource demands of online. Some national titles
grew their staff numbers by 10-15% between 2001 and 2007 to
cope with their growing websites.
The above numbers relate to permanent, generally full-time
(or near full-time) staff. Therefore, they do not include the
very large pool of freelance writers and photographers and in
some cases sub-editors and even editing support that the newspaper
and magazine industries use. Not only have these numbers fallen
in absolute terms (though it is difficult to measure, given the
informal nature of freelance engagement), but frequency of usage
has declined by at least 30%, and in the majority of cases there
has also been a rate or contractual re-negotiation in the last
12 months.
As a result of these conditions, it is not surprising that
the downturn is compromising the growth of digital jobs for young
school leavers and graduates who were being absorbed into such
jobs previously. While it's hard to get hard and fast numbers
on this, in simple terms there is an informal "recruitment
freeze" hanging over the whole industry. No one calls it
this of course, but some people would describe it as such in private.
Nevertheless, publishers continue to recognise there is also a
need to take on young people who are both cheap and engage with
digital publishing. So while the numbers of trainee employees
are down from where they have been in recent years, they are not
falling away entirely. There is a need to push expensive and often
less flexible (in terms of technologies and multi tasking) journalists
out. For example, redundancies at some of the national titles
have evidently focused on expensive specialists, while young generalists
have been brought in.
June 2009
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