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Data on display
Projected new jobs by major industry sector, 2016–26

Kathleen Green | December 2017

Service-providing industries are projected to account for most of the job growth in the economy between 2016 and 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In fact, of the 11.5 million new jobs BLS projects over the decade, about 10.5 million—more than 90 percent—will be in service-providing industries.

As the chart shows, the health care and social assistance sector is projected to add many more nonagricultural jobs than other sectors will over the 2016–26 decade. More than half of that growth is expected to be in the ambulatory health care services industry. (For highlights of industry employment change within each sector, click on the bars of sectors that are in boldface type.)

 

Industry sectors, and the industries that make up the sectors, are defined according to the 2012 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The federal government uses NAICS to categorize each establishment in an industry on the basis of the type of goods that workers in the industry produce or the service those workers provide. Data collected for industry analyses are sorted by NAICS code, regardless of workers’ specific job duties.

For example, all workers in a restaurant are part of the food services and drinking places industry, which is in the leisure and hospitality industry sector. Employment in the food services and drinking places industry includes restaurant managers, building cleaners, and accountants—as well as bartenders, chefs, waiters and waitresses, and other staff.

More information about projections for industry employment, occupational employment, the labor force, and the economy is available from the BLS Employment Projections program.