Service industries are those not directly concerned with the production of physical goods (such as
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
and
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
).
Some service industries, including
transportation
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, ...
,
wholesale trade and
retail trade
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...
are part of the
supply chain
In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, acti ...
delivering goods produced in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors to final consumers.
Other services are provided directly to consumers. These include
health care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, information services,
legal services
In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professi ...
,
financial services
Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...
, and
public administration
Public Administration (a form of governance) or Public Policy and Administration (an academic discipline) is the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit establ ...
.
The service sector accounts for around 70-80 per cent of employment in modern economies.
Service industries in the three-sector model
In the
three-sector model
The three-sector model in economics divides economies into three sectors of activity: extraction of raw materials ( primary), manufacturing ( secondary), and service industries which exist to facilitate the transport, distribution and sale ...
of the economy, widely used in the 20th century, the service sector was assigned the role of transporting, distributing and selling goods produced in the manufacturing (secondary sector), and was therefore described as the
tertiary sector of the economy
The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...
.
However, the majority of service employment is now found in activities that are not directly related to the production and distribution of physical goods. In the context of the three-sector model, these are referred to as the quaternary
and
quinary sectors.
An economy in which most economic activity is unrelated to physical goods production may be described as
post-industrial
In sociology, the post-industrial society is the stage of society's development when the service sector generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector of the economy.
The term was originated by Alain Touraine and is closely related to s ...
.
See also
*
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the Western world i ...
*
Information society
An information society is a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid inf ...
*
Information revolution
The term information revolution describes current economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution.
Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this societal development.
The British polymat ...
*
Knowledge economy
The knowledge economy (or the knowledge-based economy) is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is based principally on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to advancement in technical and scientific inno ...
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References
Services sector of the economy