ABSTRACT
Three-quarters of the labor force of the industrialized world works in the service sector. Ninety percent of all new jobs generated in the U.S. are in services. When defined broadly to include activities besides extraction, agriculture, and manufacturing, services comprise the lion’s share of advanced nations’ economies (70 percent of U.S. GNP) and employment, as shown in Figure 4.1. Service activities dominate the formation of these countries’ economic landscapes, and will be the source of the vast bulk of jobs of college graduates. As Figure 4.2 illustrates, many services doubled in employment in the U.S. between 1963 and 1991. Clearly, services have replaced manufacturing as
the predominant form of economic growth in many nations. One sign of the importance of services is that employment in McDonald’s-the quintessential fast-food producer-is larger than that of U.S. Steel (now USX), once the largest manufacturing firm in the world. Long dismissed as an insignificant handmaiden to manufacturing, services have come into their own as a leading component of industrial location.
