May Day Post-Mortem – Are US Goods Producing Jobs Ever Coming Back?

The proportions that make up America’s Service, Goods Producing, and Governmental employment have fundamentally changed since WWII. The chart below outlines that nearly all US job growth since 1939 has come from the service sector, with an assist from government jobs. And as for the Goods producing sector, it currently employs the same number as it did in March of 1953 and nearly five million fewer than at it’s peak in 1979. The goods producing sector has been outnumbered by the government sector since 2009, another inglorious milestone for America.
Apparently, the future of US employment is a narrative about service providers serving service providers with ever more governance (chart below)?!?
So, what are these classifications? Employment is split up among these groups as follows:
Service (Wholesale/Retail Trade, Transport & Warehousing, Utilities, Information, Finance, Real Estate, Professional & Business Services, Education & Healthcare, Leisure & Hospitality, Accommodation & Food Services) Government (Federal, State, Local) Goods Producing (Construction, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Oil / Gas extraction, Mining…plus support services for these activities) Below, US employment is broken down by sector, as a percentage of the total US population since 1939 (as far as the data set goes). The service industry is now (as a %) employing nearly 40% of the total US population…up from just 15% prior to WWII. Government employment has more than doubled from 3% to 7%. However, goods producing employment has fallen from it’s 1943 peak of 14% to just 6% of the population presently making anything.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 2, 2017.