APPENDIXService Trends and Take-Aways

In the course of our work, we have tracked a number of global trends in the service sector. They disclose interesting patterns for service work in the developed economies of the world. Some of the most interesting are presented in the following figures. Observations that they support include those shown in the sidebar.

Of the trends mentioned in the sidebar, two highlight concerns of ours and of economists in general.

The first is the productivity gap between workers in manufacturing and services. Data in figure A-4 shows that in the United States between 1987 and 2011, productivity in manufacturing grew a full percentage point a year more than in a wide cross-section of businesses encompassed by the Bureau ...

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