ABSTRACT
A region looking to economic development must create the factors that will be attractive to service industries. To investigate the "service as the industry of the future" hypothesis, the US may be used as a case study of the place where services have grown the fastest and hold the largest share of total employment. Characteristics of service sector jobs vary little across countries. Traditionally a labor intensive industry, the service industry has increasingly contributed to fixed capital formation, and is more capital intensive than it used to be. Historically, government's biggest and most successful regional economic development policies have focused on transportation. Business service workers, however, typically are located where businesses are located and thus reflect, augment, and intensify, rather than cause, regional patterns of growth. The financial service sector of finance, banking and insurance is the third category which dominates service job growth.
