Related BLS programs | Related articles
Services: business demand rivals consumer demand in driving job growth
Bill Goodman and Reid SteadmanMore than 97 percent of the jobs added
to U.S. payrolls in approximately the
last 12 years were provided by the service-producing sector. That sector is
divided into six major divisions of industries, including: transportation,
communications, and public utilities; wholesale trade;
retail trade; finance, insurance, and real estate;
services; and government. (See chart 1.) Just one of the six
divisions, services—which includes such diverse industries as healthcare,
entertainment, temp agencies, and business consulting—gained considerably more
than half the jobs added to the U.S. economy and became the largest division by
far. As late as 1984, the numbers of jobs in the manufacturing, retail trade,
government, and services divisions were reasonably comparable. By 1999, services
had about twice the employment of manufacturing or government and about one and
three-quarters times the number of jobs in retail trade.1
This excerpt is from an article published in the April 2002 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
Read abstract Download full article in PDF (89K)
Footnotes
1 Data representing employment as
used in this article are from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program,
which surveys nearly 380,000 nonfarm employers monthly. For more information on
the CES program’s concepts and methodology, see BLS Handbook of Methods,
Bulletin 2490 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 1997), chapter 2, pp. 15–31.
These data are available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm.
National Current Employment Statistics
Related Monthly Labor Review articles
Employment in
services industries affected by recessions and expansions—Oct.
2001.
Services industry
in the 'good' versus 'bad' jobs debate.—Feb.
1998.
Employment shifts
in high-technology industries, 1988-96.—June
1997.
Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current Issue | Index | Subscribe | Archives
Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research Papers