Services in American Economic History

Abstract

This chapter chronicles the transformation of the US economy to one where over 80 percent of the labor force is employed in the service sector. The initial section discusses the difficult task of defining services—the service industries as opposed to the service sector. The growth of services began earlier and increased faster in the United States than in other countries. The discussion of this growth is divided into sections on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The roles of education, the entry of women into the labor force, self-employment, and foreign trade are discussed. The final section concentrates on services’ role in the comparative productivity performance of the US, UK, and German economies.