ABSTRACT
In 1947 employment in the service sector of the economy—everything from banking to retailing to janitoring—reached 50 percent and is 78 percent. There are a number of pressures on the economy that have changed and continue to change the conditions of employment and wages. Manufacturing, the backbone of the US economy, is no longer dominant. The computer chip is the technology that is transforming the US toward a service economy. Microelectronic-based systems of information allow for the storage, manipulation, and retrieval of data with speed and accuracy unknown just a few years ago. During the 1980s, US corporations accumulated $1.5 trillion in new debt to finance new acquisitions, the building of skyscrapers, and lavish office buildings. The debt required companies to divert massive sums of cash into interest payments, which in turn meant less money was available for new plants and equipment, less money for research and development.
