R John Howe expressed some reservations about the shift to knowledge work
and I explained I didn't intend to suggest that most work was now knowledge
work. I did decide to do some digging into Bureau of Labor and census data
regarding occupations as a way of seeing just how the employed population
does distribute across some recognizable categories. Here, from the Bureau
of Labor's Occupations web site are the latest (2003) figures for the 22
basic groups into which are slotted all employed persons except for
self-employed and farm workers.
Office & Admin Support 22,678,010
Sales & Related 13,534,180
Production 10,488,450
Food Prep & Serving 10,216,620
Trans & Material Moving 9,414,920
Edu, Training & Library 7,831,630
Management 6,653,480
Health Practitioners & Techs 6,173,760
Construction & Extraction 6,085,510
Install, Maint & Repair 5,226,080
Business & Financial Ops 4,924,210
Bldg & Grounds Clean/Maint 4,260,380
Healthcare Support 3,208,770
Protective Service 2,999,630
Personal Care & Service 2,988,590
Computer & Math 2,827,010
Architecture & Engineering 2,376,650
Community & Soc Services 1,615,610
Arts/Ent/Sports/Media 1,538,150
Life, Phys, Soc Sciences 1,113,130
Legal 951,510
Farm/Fish/Forestry 461,630
Department of Census figures for 2000 indicate the following numbers for
industry groups (not a perfect match with BLS figures);
Agriculture, forestry, mining 2,426,053
Construction 8,801,507
Manufacturing 18,286,005
Wholesale trade 4,666,757
Retail trade 15,221,716
Transportation/utilities/warehousing 6,740,102
Information 3,996,564
Finance/insurance/real estate 8,934,972
Professional/scientific/mgt/admin 12,061,865
Education/health/social services 25,843,029
Arts/entertain/rec/hotels/food 10,210,295
Other services 6,320,632
Public admin 6,212,015
If anyone ever figures out how many knowledge workers there are - or even a
gross approximation - let me know.
Regards,
Fred Nickols, CPT
Distance Consulting
"Assistance at a Distance"
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us