🔍 Read the full analysis: Jobs Across The Field, Factory, And Office Sectors on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
A November 2, 2026, article from ThorstenMeyerAI.com opens a 60-part series on how employment has shifted among farming, manufacturing and services. It cites historical estimates showing agriculture’s share of the U.S. labor force fell from 73.7% in 1800 to 1.5% in the ILO’s modelled estimate for 2025, while stressing that sector definitions vary.
ThorstenMeyerAI.com published the first episode of a planned 60-part series on November 2, examining how employment has moved from farming to manufacturing and services. The installment uses historical and modelled employment estimates to show the scale of that change, including a fall in farming’s share of the U.S. labor force from 73.7% in 1800 to 1.5% in the ILO’s 2025 estimate.
The article organizes work into three broad sectors: the primary sector, which takes resources from nature; the secondary sector, which makes goods and builds infrastructure; and the tertiary sector, which provides services. Farming, fishing and forestry fit the first category; manufacturing and construction the second; and trade, transport, health, education and government the third. Some classifications differ, particularly over mining and work performed inside manufacturing companies.
For the United States, the article cites economic historian Stanley Lebergott’s estimates of farming’s share of the labor force: 73.7% in 1800, 54.8% in 1850, 40.2% in 1900 and 12.0% in 1950. It then gives an International Labour Organization modelled estimate of 1.5% for 2025. These figures span different periods and sources, so the 2025 value should be understood as a modelled estimate, not a direct count presented on the same basis as every historical figure.
The article also points to changes outside the United States. It says China’s primary-sector employment share declined from 83.5% in 1952 to 22.2% in 2024, while Japan’s census recorded a fall from 53.8% in 1920 to 3.2% in 2020. It cites ILO modelled estimates that services have employed more people worldwide than farming since 2001. The figures describe broad employment patterns, not the number of jobs in every sector or the conditions of individual workers.
Where Workers Have Moved
The shift between sectors helps explain how economies can produce food with far fewer people working on farms. Changes in technology and productivity have reduced the labor needed for some tasks, while employment has expanded in manufacturing and, later, services. The article’s figures show the scale of that long-run reallocation; they do not mean that farming has become unimportant or that every worker displaced from one industry moved directly into another.
The distinctions also matter in current debates about automation. A job’s sector can depend on how statistics classify the employer or the work: an engineer at a car company, for example, may be counted as manufacturing in one measure and services in another. That makes the three-sector map useful for broad trends, but too blunt to settle questions about particular occupations, job quality or who benefits from technological change.
The installment frames its larger series around whether machines will continue to shift work and which tasks remain human. Its author offers a separate thesis that automation could become a sector of its own within a decade or a few decades, performing up to 90% of work without a human hand. That is the author’s projection, not a confirmed finding; the article says a later episode will examine it.
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How the Three-Sector Map Formed
The three-part framework developed in economic writing during the 1930s and 1940s. The article credits New Zealand economist Allan G. B. Fisher with adding the term “tertiary” in a book written in 1934 and published in 1935. Fisher described the shift of employment from primary activities to secondary and, to a greater extent, tertiary production.
Economist Colin Clark compared sectoral employment across countries in his 1940 book, putting figures to the pattern. The article says Clark also observed that the industrial share of employment could rise and later decline, rather than increase indefinitely. French economist Jean Fourastié, writing in 1949, argued that services could absorb workers no longer needed in sectors where technology raised output. The source presents these as historical arguments, not guarantees about the present or future labor market.
The installment also challenges the claim that the United States no longer makes goods. Citing the figures it provides, it says U.S. factory employment is about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while real manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. Those comparisons concern different measures—employment and inflation-adjusted output—and do not establish how gains or losses were distributed among workers.
Limits of the Employment Comparisons
The article combines historical estimates, census data and an ILO modelled figure. It does not provide the full underlying tables or methods in the supplied material, so readers cannot assess every difference in definitions, coverage or comparability from this account alone. The U.S. historical series described by the article counts the labor force aged 10 and over, while the 2025 figure is identified as an ILO modelled estimate.
Sector boundaries also vary by statistical system. Mining, for example, is usually grouped with primary activities in the article’s outline, but Clark’s classification and Japan’s census place it in the secondary sector. The source does not specify how each country’s figures handle every borderline occupation. Its automation thesis is also a forecast whose assumptions and evidence have not yet been tested in the series.
The Series Turns to Automation
ThorstenMeyerAI.com describes the installment as the start of a daily series of 60 episodes about how economies are built, how work moves between sectors and which tasks may remain human as machines take on more work. The article says episode 48 will put the author’s automation-sector thesis on trial. The source does not give publication dates or further details for that episode, so the schedule beyond the stated daily format remains unspecified.
For now, the first installment sets out a historical framework rather than reporting a new labor-market data release. Later episodes are expected, according to the series description, to explore examples such as tractors and chatbots. Whether they will add new data, assess specific occupations or revise the author’s forecast is not yet clear.
Key Questions
What is the three-sector model of employment?
It groups work into primary activities that obtain resources from nature, secondary activities that make goods or build infrastructure, and tertiary activities that provide services.
The article cites estimates of 73.7% in 1800 and 12.0% in 1950, followed by an ILO modelled estimate of 1.5% for 2025. The figures come from different sources and should not be treated as a single uniform series without checking their definitions.
Does the article say the United States no longer manufactures goods?
No. It says factory employment is about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while real manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. Employment and output measure different things.
Is automation already a separate employment sector?
No such change is established in the article. The idea that automation could become its own sector and perform up to 90% of work is explicitly presented as the author’s thesis, not a confirmed fact.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
