11. The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge
- Author:
- Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- This paper examines the evolving structure of the American economy, specifically, the trends in employment, value added, and value added per employee from 1990 to 2008. These trends are closely connected with complementary trends in the size and structure of the global economy, particularly in the major emerging economies. Employing historical time series data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. industries are separated into internationally tradable and nontradable components, allowing for employment and value-added trends at both the industry and the aggregate level to be examined. Value added grew across the economy, but almost all of the incremental employment increase of 27.3 million jobs was on the nontradable side. On the nontradable side, government and health care are the largest employers and provided the largest increments (an additional 10.4 million jobs) over the past two decades. There are obvious questions about whether those trends can continue; without fast job creation in the nontradable sector, the United States would already have faced a major employment challenge.
- Topic:
- Economics, Markets, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States and America