As employment at newspapers declines, the number of jobs at internet publishers has more than tripled (AFP Photo/ALEX WONG)

Washington (AFP) - More than half of the jobs at US newspapers have disappeared since 2001, with a large portion of the losses offset by employment gains at internet firms, government figures showed Monday.

The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed US newspaper employment fell from 412,000 in January 2001 to 174,000 in September 2016.

In the internet publishing and portal segment the number of jobs grew from 67,000 in 2007 -- the earliest for which data was available -- to 206,000 last year.

The figures confirm the huge upheaval in the news media industry, where a shift to online sources has forced a major retrenchment in print.

The same report showed that the number of newspaper industry businesses fell from 9,310 in 2001 to 7,623 last year, a decline of 18 percent.

The number of internet publishing and web search portals meanwhile jumped 150 percent from 2007 to 13,924 last year, the report showed.

The report showed declines in magazines, book publishing and radio broadcasting, while television industry jobs held nearly steady since 2001.

The number of periodicals, or magazines, hit a high of 9,232 in 2008 and have been declining since then, with a total of 7,566 in 2016.