The United States economy is a “how can I help you?” not a “what can I make you?” economy. Marketing and social media, search engine marketing, retail, banking, consulting, legal, and other service sector jobs are the foundation of the modern American labor system. Although manufacturing has not died out completely it lives in the shadows of the service industry. Television commercials illustrate this reality all day. The majority of television ads we view are for lawyer, health care, marketing, consulting, repair, recreation, and transportation services. What they all have in common is the “what can we do for you?” aspect. The other end of television advertising is selling products and goods that were manufactured abroad. Most of the electronic devices, cars, household appliances, clothing, accessories, and durable goods that Americans purchase are manufactured in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In 2010 forty-seven percent of American employment opportunities were in management and business. Management and business are vague terms that include a multiplicity of jobs across the service sector spectrum. Online marketing and social media services have been one of the fastest expanding business industries in America over the past ten years. The advent of internet accessibility and mobile technology has created an entirely new niche in labor and employment. Search engine marketing professionals and social media gurus did not exist in the 1990s but are incredibly popular today.

In the nineteenth century America was mostly a manufacturing and producing country. Textile and durable good manufacturers employed a large portion of the available American labor force. Antebellum Americans made most of the goods that they bought and used for their daily lives. Most clothing, furniture, tools, and appliances were made in the U.S.A. and manufacturing was a keystone of the American economy. But after the Civil War the social and economic landscape started to change. Industrial textile and agricultural machinery allowed manufacturers to produce more goods quicker and with a smaller number of employees. Displaced workers moved from farms and rural communities to the cities in search of new kinds of employment. These new urban dwellers grew into the new American middle class.

The positive trend in service sector employment was directly correlated to the rise of the American middle class. The base of the service sector was middle-class employment at department stores, restaurants, cafes, hotels, grocery stores, transportation companies, and business offices. Urban immigration and the rise of a middle class led to the arrival of the department stores and office buildings where most of these people worked. The urban landscape changed as the social and economic landscape evolved. The service industry outdid the manufacturing industry by mid-twentieth century. Demand for doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other white-collar professionals was greater than the demand for miners, steel-workers and textile laborers.

Today that trend towards the service sector and away from the manufacturing sector continues albeit not as steadily. The American service industry is saturated with fast food restaurants, movie theaters, brand clothing stores, shopping malls, marketing and social media providers, mobile phone and internet services, electronic stores, repair businesses, and medical and legal assistants, just to name a very few. The latest addition to the industry has been jobs related to search engine marketing and marketing and social media. The world wide web is the epitome of what the service industry is all about. The internet does not build physical products or goods. The internet provides a forum for sharing, communicating, and trading ideas, knowledge, and media.

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