Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

4.2.3 Employment 
A final indicator for economic health and growth potential are employment levels. Table 13 
shows the number of employees in China, India, Japan, US and EU27.
The figures show declining employment in the EU27, the US and Japan, a development which 
corresponds with the decline in circulation in these respective markets. For China and India, 
WAN data are incomplete and show such large and unexplained differences between 
subsequent years, that we are uncertain about their reliability and decided not to include them 
here.

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The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
75
 
Table 13: Number of employees in news publishing industry in China, India, Japan and the USA 
 
2005 
2006 
2007 
2008 
2009 
% change 
2005/2009 
China 
-- -- -- -- 
-- 
India 
-- -- -- -- 
-- 
Japan
1 
49.523 49.668 48.069 48.331 
47.599 
-4% 
USA
2 
54.100 53.600 55.000 52.600 
46.700 
-14% 
EU27
3
 
304.300 310.000 302.300 na na
1
WAN-IFRA (2010) Source NSK: the figures include employees working for news agencies. 
2 
WAN-IFRA (2010) Source: 2005-2008 American Society of Newspaper Editors; 2009 American 
Society of Newspaper Editors; US Bureau of Labour Statistics. Included are journalists and 
newsroom staff. For 2009 a Total number of employees in the Newspaper publishing industry is 
provided: 295.010. 
3 
Based on Eurostat data, total number of employees, not only journalists and newsroom staff. 
 
4.3 Online 
news 
As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, a considerable part of print newspaper readers has 
shifted to online news sources. To assess the vitality of the EU newspaper publishing market 
it is therefore also of interest to compare how newspapers in the EU are performing online in 
comparison with newspapers in the US and the main Asian newspaper markets. The report of 
the worldwide industry organisation WAN-IFRA provides figures on the number of unique 
visitors per month of the top 100 newspapers websites. Whereas of the top-100 print 
newspapers (measured in circulation), only 10% find their origin in Europe, the top-100 of 
daily newspaper websites (measured in unique visitors per month) shows a rather different 
picture. In the top-10 of this list, Europe is represented by seven newspapers, five from the 
UK and two from Spain. In total, 40 websites of European newspapers are in the top-100 list. 
If we add-up the number of unique visitors of these news sites per continent, 47% of the total 
amount of visitors can be attributed to websites of European newspapers, 33% to Asian 
newspapers and 20% to American or Australian newspapers (see Figure 27). The differences 
in ranking of European, Asian and US newspapers between the off- and online readership can 
probably be explained by the fact that more Europeans than Asians have access to the 
internet, and consequently are more likely to read online newspapers than people in Asia. The 
fact that some of the European newspaper can, through their online presence, also gain new 
audiences across borders, might also contribute to their success. However more data on the 
composition and origin of news website visitors would be needed to be able to provide a 
better interpretation of the figures. 

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