🔍 Read the full analysis: How Jobs Move Between Field, Factory, And Office on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
Employment has shifted over centuries from farming to manufacturing and then services, according to historical estimates and international labor data cited by ThorstenMeyerAI.com. Its account says services employed more people worldwide than farming from 2001 onward, while stressing that the three-sector map is a simplified way to classify jobs—not a forecast of how automation will reshape work.
ThorstenMeyerAI.com published a historical account on November 2 tracing how workers moved from farming into factories and service jobs, using a three-sector model to explain the shift. The article says that, in the International Labour Organization’s modelled estimates, services have employed more people worldwide than farming since 2001—a change that frames the site’s new 60-episode series on work and technology.
The model sorts work into three broad groups: the primary sector, which takes resources from nature, including agriculture, fishing and forestry; the secondary sector, which makes or builds things; and the tertiary sector, which provides services such as transport, retail, health care, education and government. The article uses bread as an example: growing wheat is primary work, milling and baking are secondary, and transporting or selling the loaf is tertiary.
The account cites estimates showing a long decline in farming’s share of US employment. Historian Stanley Lebergott’s series puts it at 73.7% in 1800, 54.8% in 1850, 40.2% in 1900 and 12.0% in 1950. The ILO’s modelled estimate for 2025 is 1.5%. These figures describe the share of workers in agriculture, not the number of people employed or the amount of food produced.
The article also points to changes in Asia. It says China’s primary-sector employment share fell from 83.5% in 1952 to 22.2% in 2024, while Japan’s census recorded a decline from 53.8% in 1920 to 3.2% in 2020. The author cautions that sector definitions vary: mining, for example, is classified as primary in many statistics but as secondary in Colin Clark’s 1940 framework and in Japan’s census.
What the Sector Shift Shows
The figures show that economic change does not simply eliminate a category of work; it alters where people work. The fall in agriculture’s employment share happened alongside the expansion of manufacturing and services. That matters for readers trying to understand automation: the historical pattern offers a way to ask where displaced tasks and workers might go, but does not by itself predict future outcomes.
The article also challenges the claim that the United States no longer makes goods. Citing its figures, it says US factory employment is about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while real manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. The measures track different things—jobs and inflation-adjusted output—so they can move in opposite directions as productivity and production methods change.
For workers and policymakers, the distinction is consequential. A declining share of jobs in one sector does not necessarily mean that sector has stopped producing, nor does growth in services establish that workers can move easily into those roles. The three-sector framework helps describe broad shifts, while leaving questions about wages, job quality, location and training unanswered.
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How Economists Built the Three Sectors
The categories became a formal framework in the early 20th century. New Zealand economist Allan G. B. Fisher introduced the term “tertiary” in a book written in 1934 and published in 1935, according to the source article. He later described a shift from primary work toward secondary and, to a greater extent, tertiary activity.
Economist Colin Clark compared employment across countries in his 1940 book, The Conditions of Economic Progress. He described movement from agriculture into manufacturing and then commerce and services, and argued that the industrial share did not rise indefinitely. French economist Jean Fourastié added a theory about productivity: he argued in 1949 that services would absorb workers freed by faster technical progress in industry. That was an argument about the future, not a guarantee that every displaced worker would find a new job.
The current report is the opening episode of Work After Work, which ThorstenMeyerAI.com describes as a daily series of 60 episodes on how the economy is built and how work changes as machines take on more tasks. The author says a later episode will examine a personal thesis that automation could become a separate sector. That is presented as speculation, not an established economic category or measured forecast.
“The map is less than a century old.”
— Thorsten Meyer, in the ThorstenMeyerAI.com article
Limits of the Employment Map
The three-sector system is a broad classification, and the article acknowledges that borderline occupations can be counted differently across statistical systems. A software engineer employed by a carmaker, for example, may appear under manufacturing in one dataset and services in another. Comparisons across countries and decades can therefore depend on how sectors are defined and which workers are included.
The supplied material does not provide the full underlying tables or methods for every statistic, so readers cannot independently assess all series from the article alone. Lebergott’s historical US figures and the ILO’s modelled estimate also come from different sources and time periods. They describe employment shares; they do not establish why each individual worker changed jobs or whether the same people moved directly from farms to factories and offices.
And while Fourastié argued that services would take in workers released by machines, the historical account does not prove that future automation will follow the same path. The article’s proposal that automation might become a distinct sector is explicitly the author’s thesis. Its scale, timing and meaning remain unknown.
The Series Turns to Automation
ThorstenMeyerAI.com says Work After Work will publish 60 daily episodes on the economy, changes in work and the roles machines may take on. The first episode establishes the sector framework; the series is expected to use it to discuss technologies such as tractors and chatbots.
The author says episode 48 will examine the proposal that automation could form a sector of its own. Until then, the source offers no confirmed timetable or evidence that such a sector will emerge. The next useful evidence will be the series’ later analysis and the employment data it uses to distinguish measured trends from forecasts.
Key Questions
What are the three sectors of the economy?
The primary sector extracts or grows resources, the secondary sector makes and builds goods, and the tertiary sector provides services. Some occupations and industries are classified differently across datasets.
When did services overtake farming worldwide?
According to the article’s account of ILO modelled estimates, services have employed more people worldwide than farming since 2001. The claim concerns employment totals, not output or productivity.
Does the decline in US factory jobs mean the country makes less?
Not by the measures cited in the article. It reports factory employment about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while real manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. Jobs and output measure different things.
Is automation already a fourth economic sector?
No such conclusion is established in the source material. The author suggests that automation could become its own sector, but labels this a thesis, not a fact, and says a later episode will examine it.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
