The Service sector increasingly dominates the U.S. labour market

The private service sector in the United States now accounts for over 71% of all jobs given the growth in entertainment, tourism, healthcare and educational services. The exponential growth of the internet and people buying more experiences (like travelling or eating out) rather than buying goods means the goods-producing industries (like construction, manufacturing and mining) have seen a decline in jobs and now contribute less than 14% of all jobs. Government jobs have contributed around 15% consistently to the overall labour market over the past 50 years.

US goods services government jobs


The biggest growth in jobs since 2007 in the United States has been in the Educational sector while most jobs have been lost in Manufacturing.

US jobs sectoral since 2007

Total Nonfarm jobs are up 8% since 2007
Construction jobs are down 7% since 2007
Educational services jobs are up 26.9% since 2007
Health Care jobs are up 25% since 2007
Manufacturing jobs are down 9.7% since 2007
Retail jobs are up 3.2% since 2007
Financial services jobs are up 1.9% since 2007

US jobs indexed since 2007

 

What about bringing back manufacturing to the U.S.?

The fact is that U.S. manufacturing has been growing but it isn’t generating too many new jobs. It isn’t surprising given increased productivity, increased automation and shift towards higher value goods (like aircrafts or high-end electronics).

 

Here are some graphs,

Indexed Number of manufacturing jobs vs Indexed manufacturing output (Both indexed to January 2012 = 100)

US Manafacturing jobs vs Output

 

 

Year on Year Percentage Change: Number of manufacturing jobs vs manufacturing output

 

Growing Manufacturing output

US Manufacturing Output

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.