The dramatic decline of the economy in the second half of 2008 derailed agencies across the industry, many of which originally felt they were on pace for a record year. The reverberations from the faltering of the housing and securities sectors significantly impacted the PR industry's growth.
The agencies that submitted revenues and staff numbers for 2008 (holding company firms, as they do every year, cite Sarbanes-Oxley as grounds for not submitting exact figures) for the most part showed single-digit growth ...