Cover Stories

Who belongs to the swelling ranks of the U.S. service economy? Such workers are often depicted as a legion of hamburger flippers and computer programmers, but in fact they constitute a huge, diverse group whose members range from cashiers to lumberjacks. The vast majority of the U.S. labor force, more than 76 million workers, belong to the service sector; 25 million others are in goods-producing jobs, and 3 million are in agriculture. The Labor Department defines the goods-producing sector as manufacturing, mining and construction, but the rapidly growing service-producing sector tends to be much broader, encompassing many new types of jobs that do not seem to fit into any other category.

Simply put, the service economy is the sector that runs on trade and information. Of the nearly $2.3 trillion in private services generated in 1985, 27% came from finance, insurance and real estate. Retail business accounted for 16%, wholesale trade for 12%, transportation and utilities for 12%, and communications for 5%.

Service jobs come in every imaginable description, from powerful (President of the U.S.) to humble (janitors), noisy (auctioneers) to quiet (librarians), outdoorsy (hunters and trappers) to indoorsy (accountants and pharmacists). Among the largest job classifications are professionals (13.8 million), executives and managers (12.2 million), sales workers (12.7 million) and secretaries (4 million). In more specific categories, the Labor Department counts 131,000 dentists, 102,000 economists, 84,000 professional athletes, 124,000 messengers, 324,000 bartenders and 126,000 news vendors. The country employs eight times as many hairdressers and cosmetologists (707,000) as it does barbers (91,000).

While the service economy offers a far brighter employment picture than manufacturing, many of its jobs are relatively low paying. An estimated 556,000 new cashier jobs will open up between 1984 and 1995, but the average weekly earnings for such workers at the beginning of that period was only $195. Some 452,000 registered nurses will be hired in that span; their weekly earnings averaged just $415. The service sector also includes such highly paid groups as lawyers and psychiatrists, some of whom can easily generate as many complaints as a surly salesclerk.