First impressions: engaging young people in print careers

Why is youth engagement so critical to a healthy and agile print industry?

What is the younger generation’s impression of the print industry? The majority of them have the misguided perception that it is boring, manual and low-paid, with limited opportunities. Due to this incorrect perception, many are missing out on great opportunities in the industry. 

The reality is that the sector has changed drastically in the last 30 years. Technology, particularly digital printing, has grown exponentially. Creative, dynamic, and exciting are three more suitable words to describe the current state of the print industry. 

Attracting young, motivated people is crucial to retain competitiveness in any industry. However, at first glance, the opposite is happening. In the US, the average age of a print shop worker is 48. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics reported that the number of skilled print workers (pre-press technicians, printers, post-press workers and print machine assistants) reduced by 73% between 2006 and 2021: from 112,300 to just 30,500. This decline, which corresponds to the structural change in communications due to the internet and e-commerce, was by far the most severe among the many trades analysed – even greater than among more unfashionable jobs such as cobblers and welders. 

These figures do not mean the print industry is in poor health. The global commercial printing market size was valued at $489.63bn in 2022 and is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.8% between 2023 and 2030. 

Shorter runs, automated processes and robotics allow employees to focus on diversifying their skills and contribute to the business elsewhere

Today, the skill-sets required by printers have changed. Traditionally, printing was labour-intensive work and more individualised, with employees possessing hard-won technical skills making individual but variable decisions based on their own judgements to solve problems. Now, due to user-friendly machines a few days or weeks of training is all that is required to be up to speed. Shorter runs, automated processes and robotics allow employees to focus on diversifying their skills and contributing to the business elsewhere.

Therefore, printers need different skill-sets that are more suited to the modern world. The industry needs to appeal more to younger generations of workers, who would thrive in a higher-tech industry that requires stronger multi-tasking, digital, technical and front-office skills. Nevertheless, print still has an image problem that needs to be corrected to fulfil its potential. What can printers do to change how they are perceived?

What can printers do? 

Apprenticeships are still useful, but the decline of the ‘skilled worker’ in the print industry suggests that it is likely that printers will be searching for young workers with enough skills to be ready to work immediately. Conventional universities and higher education institutes are unlikely to keep up with the continual technological advancements of the private sector. Therefore, printers must be prepared to invest in training and maintain the fine balance between on-the-job training and training by external providers. 

How many young people interested in fashion, pharmaceuticals or interior décor consider the digital printing involved in these and many other industrial sectors?

Employers should also do outreach to ensure printing inspires young people. Intergraf coordinated the Print Your Future project, which attempted to find, attract and retain a new skilled workforce for quality jobs in the European graphics industry. This was a 24-month project running from 2020 to 2022, funded under EU Social Dialogue (VP/2019/001/0061) about future skills and recruitment in the printing industry, and focusing primarily on four countries: Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. Here, Young Workers Day events were set up, where young workers already in the industry showed what they loved about their work. Printers should put more focus on advertising the benefits of working in print and the training on offer at jobs fairs and in schools, as well as on social media and through higher education institutes.

It is important that the industry passionately and proudly demonstrates the sheer scale of print in the modern world, and the many wonderful ways that print can be used. Print can be found across almost every industry, even in the digital world. How many young people interested in fashion, pharmaceuticals or interior décor consider the digital printing involved in these and many other industrial sectors? Print builds and supports the world we live in. It increasingly works alongside and with digital, automation and e-commerce.

Millennials, concerned with social justice and environmental causes, should know that printing is a sector populated by many highly environmentally aware companies, and they can materially affect the global move towards carbon neutrality. 

The Decent Jobs for Youth campaign, backed by the UN and the International Labour Organization, states that around the globe 270 million young people (or one-fifth) are not in employment, education or training. There are plenty of opportunities for printers to garner the interest of the younger generation. Younger people are in a unique position to pass knowledge back to their elders – the digital natives can teach just as much as they can learn from printers with decades of experience. They are also more in touch with a fast-changing and digitally-driven commercial environment.