Christian Science Monitor: Great global shift to service jobs
Move over agriculture, according to the International Labor Organization, service is where the growth is.
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For the first time in human history, more people are laboring in service trades than in food production, according to data gathered by the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency affiliated with the United Nations.
As recently as 1996, agriculture accounted for 42 percent of world employment, with another 21 percent of workers in goods-producing industries and 37 percent in services. By last year, the ILO says in a report released over the weekend, 42 percent were in services, 37 percent in agriculture, and 22 percent in industry.
It's too soon to talk about a white-collar world. Many of these newly urbanized workers aren't employed so much as they are scraping for survival on city streets. Mr. De Santos's own life has become easier, yet he recalls his father's farm as "a civilized life compared to the life the poor live today in big cities."
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Technology, in fact, is opening the door to a new phase of economic competition in services – from banking to tourism and healthcare. This could expose advanced economies like the United States to new challenges, even as it presents enticing new opportunities for entrepreneurs. The Internet and air transport now make it as easy to trade many services across borders as it is to trade goods.
This migration away from farm work represents a vital phase in human progress, Mr. Clark says. In many places, it is occurring at a surprisingly slow rate. Once people make that step, they tend to live in larger communities, acquire more skills, and eventually make more money.
The trend doesn't make manufacturing unimportant. But as the world gets wealthier, a rising share of income gets spent on services. And rising factory productivity allows more people to work in services.
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But some economists do worry about disruptions. As technology and rising education levels in developing nations turn services into tradable commodities, workers in Boston may find themselves in competition with lower-cost rivals in Brasilia. And workers in Brasilia could find themselves competing with even cheaper labor in Bangladesh.
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Even unabashed proponents of globalization's virtues talk about the need to help displaced workers adjust. "Trade ... might even double in the next 20 years or so" as a share of the economy, predicts Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University in New York. "It's a fantastically good situation for everybody involved. [But you] have to have institutional support to handle the volatility" of jobs.
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