Employment Trends - The Sectors - A Century Of Change

People work in various sectors of the economy. One way to divide the "place" of work is to divide the economy into Agriculture, Goods Producing Activities (mining, construction, manufacturing), Services Producing Activities (transportation, wholesale and retail trade, utilities, finance and its related branches, and "services" narrowly viewed), and finally into Government. Education is largely in the Government sector but some of it is private and falls into Services. We shall have more to say about Education later under this topic.

Another way is to look at "public" and "private" sectors and to further divide the private sector into a "profit-making" and a "not-for-profit" segment. Data to illuminate that perspective come later.

The pie charts above are based on employment in 1900 and in 2000; the sectors are shown as percent of total employment. In 1900 total employment was a little shy of 26.9 million, in 2000 just shy of 136.5 million; the second pie represents a lot more people.

We were once an agricultural nation. Now we are a nation of service providers. Agriculture and Goods Producers are the losers, Services and Government the gainers in this process. Agriculture and Goods Producers benefited from tremendous improvements in productivity (which has its own chapter in this volume). Services, in a way, have had to "absorb" the employment freed by technology and automation primarily in mining and manufacturing.

An interesting thing to note is that today it takes proportionally far fewer people to provide the "basics," the first level of production — food, fibers, timber, minerals, and the products and the structures that are made of them. In 1900, 43 people out of every hundred labored to produce grains, vegetables, fruits, and meat. In 2000, two people — helped by a part-timer who worked two days a week — got the job done. But they were indirectly helped by people who made tractors, mined fuels and distilled them, and provided scientifically perfected seed, fertilizers, and pesticides.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, 1975. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975 (for 1900 data). U.S. Bureau of the Census for data on the 2000 structure of employment.