Striking changes occurred in the composition of the workforce in the postwar period. Agriculture continued to decline as a source of jobs; by the 1980s, the percentage of agricultural workers in the most advanced industrial countries had dropped well below 10 percent. The most striking development was the expansion of the service sector, which came to employ more than half of all workers. In the United States, the agricultural and industrial sectors (represented by production and transportation workers), which had dominated a century earlier, now offered less than a third of all jobs.

Question to Consider

What difference does it make to ordinary people that jobs in service work predominate? What does the rise of the service sector mean for the economy and society as a whole?