Services Jobs Are Back on Top
The employment boom in manufacturing, mining and the like has faded, and the U.S. economy has gone back to creating mainly services jobs.
The boom is over.
Photographer: Luke Sharett/BloombergOne of the main economic stories of the past six decades or so has been the rise of services. Nearly 9 out of every 10 nonfarm jobs in the U.S. are now in industries (and government agencies) that deliver services rather than make, construct, dig up or cut down things.1
This recovery, though, has been a little different, with employment actually rising faster in goods-producing industries than in services since jobs started to rebound in 2010. Early on that wasn’t a big surprise. The recession that preceded the recovery had been so brutal for employment in construction and manufacturing that some sort of bounce-back was due. But another surge in goods employment followed in 2014 and then, after the “mini-recession” of 2015 and 2016, came an even more impressive one starting in 2017. That’s over now.