Above is a chart of total service employees. From the highest to lowest point, we've lost about 4.6 million jobs. However, we've also gained about 2.1 million from the low point in October 2010 to the latest employment report.
The above chart shows total manufacturing jobs for the last five years. From the high to the low point, we've lost about 2.6 million manufacturing jobs. From the low point to the high, we've added 285,000 manufacturing jobs. What's interesting about this number is manufacturing has been a primary driver of the last two years. This tells us that automation is having a tremendous impact on manufacturing employment.
Finally, we have total government jobs, where we see a slow, continual bleed. Eliminating the two spikes in the chart, we've lost 597,000 jobs in the government sector over the last five years.
In other words, the service sector is a prime driver of the current jobs market. Next, we'll break the service numbers down into their subparts.
