The Big Restructure

By Richard Florida

It's more than a jobless recovery, we've been looking at a jobless decade or more, at least in terms of private sector jobs, according to Business Week's chief economist, Michael Mandel.

Beneath this trend lies a broad and fundamental restructuring of the U.S., and virtually every other advanced economy - the decline of manufacturing and the rise of professional, knowledge-based, and creative work on the one hand, and lower-end service work on the other. This chart (via the New York Time's Floyd Norris) depicts the shift. 


restructure.gif

Norris explains:

The total picture is of an economy that has changed in substantial ways over the decade. After the recession ends, job growth is likely to resume. But there is no indication that the secular trend toward a more service-oriented economy will reverse. A decade from now, there are likely to be still more jobs at architecture and engineering firms (up 1.2 percent a year over the last decade) and at bars and restaurants (up 1.8 percent a year). But few expect that manufacturing will reverse its long decline as a major employer in the United States.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/08/the-big-restructure/22966/