Service Sector Grows at Fastest Pace in Four Years

Strong consumer demand pushed a key measure of the economy's service sector last month to its highest level in more than four years.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said Wednesday that its index of service sector activity rose to 57.1 in December, up from 55 the previous month. Any reading above 50 indicates growth.

The increase marks the 12th straight month of expansion for the sector, which employs 80 percent of the work force. It includes industries from health care to retail to financial services.

The index is at its highest point since May 2006. The index plummeted to 37.2 in November 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. The sector contracted for all but two months in 2009, then began expanding last year.


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Cool, maybe I can finally get that Burger King job I've been salivating over!

those who made this possible! The Landless Peasants are grateful and look forward to lining-up to serve those who have the money to make use of the services -- should we be so lucky to land a position in the job-lottery of modern life.

Happy days are here again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS_1bzaj2fw

:rofl:

employees, right? So we know US companies ship our jobs overseas. Why should we celebrate the fact they're shipping more jobs out of the country? What have US companies given us lately but Republicans?

The same H1Bs that take the jobs back to their countries of origin.

US employment.

"The same H1Bs that take the jobs back to their countries of origin."
At which point it would no longer be counted.

Personally I think H1B program needs to be closed but it represents less than 1% of employment in the US.

job increases within the United States? They're not one and the same.

Welcome to Walmart.

etc.

internet/data services, ecommerce, software designs, databases (devlopment and administration), most IT functions, statisticians, data analysts, nursing (and almost everything else in medicine), researcher, most engineering disciplines, authors (and anything else in media), etc are all part of service sector.

But how many jobs were created in telecommunications, internet/data services, ecommerce, software designs, databases (devlopment and administration), most IT functions, statisticians, data analysts, nursing (and almost everything else in medicine), researcher, most engineering disciplines, authors (and anything else in media), etc.?

How many at McDonalds and Walmart, etc.?

I work in software development. I have been a service sector employee my whole life so I guess the "stigma" of service sector is somewhat dubious to me. So when people rant about flipping cheese burgers I just chuckle. My only interactions with cheeseburgers is when I consume them.

It's a bit out dated but valid.

* Forrester Research Inc. predicts U.S. employers will move 3.4 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages overseas by 2015. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimates the number of service-sector jobs moving overseas each year will hit 588,000 by 2005. A University of California at Berkeley report finds 14 million jobs are at risk of being sent offshore, and predicts job losses will exceed the Forrester study’s projections.
* Gartner Inc., a high-tech forecasting firm, estimates 10 percent of computer services and software jobs will be moved overseas by the end of this year, while a study by Meta group projects 40 percent of corporate tech operations will move offshore by 2008.
* A survey by Deloitte Research found the world’s 100 largest financial services firms expect to shift $356 billion worth of operations and about two million jobs to low-wage countries over the next five years. Another Deloitte survey of 42 global telecom operators projects 275,000 jobs in the sector will be sent off-shore by 2008.

Read more at this link:
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/exportingamerica/outsourcing_problems.cfm

Most jobs created in America are service sector jobs and most of those are the fries and welcome variety.