January 24, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Services fueled 1990s job growth

The services industry was the driving force behind job growth during the 1990s.

[Chart data—TXT]

Rapid technological transformation helped prolong the longest economic expansion on record and helped create a substantial number of employment opportunities in services. Of the 10 specific industries adding the most jobs during the decade, 7 were in services.

Personnel supply services topped the list of industries that added the most jobs during the 1990s, with over 2 million jobs added. Personnel supply services include both traditional employment agencies and help supply firms. Employment opportunities exploded in the help supply industry in the past decade as more firms relied on temporary help as a way to manage labor more effectively.

These data are a product of the BLS Current Employment Statistics Program. The services industry division is the sub-set of the service-producing sector of the economy that supplies services to other businesses and to individuals. Find out more in "Job Growth in the 1990s: a retrospect," by Julie Hatch and Angela Clinton, Monthly Labor Review, December 2000.