Innovation, Information Technologies and Human Capital in the German Service Sector

Abstract

In the last decade most industrialized countries experienced a steady growth of value added and employment in the service sector. The employment growth of the services was a major engine for additional jobs, which helped to overcome the decrease in the number of jobs in manufacturing. Given the historically high level of unemployment in Germany today, stimulating the development of the service sector is of great concern to policy makers. In addition, international comparisons reveal that the employment share of the service sector in Germany still accounts for nothing like the proportion of jobs it currently provides in the USA or Canada, for example.2 In 1994, almost two-thirds of Germany’s gainfully employed population were working in the service sector (including publicsector employees). This means that its ratio to the other sectors has reversed within just 35 years. This ongoing transformation into a service society becomes all the clearer when we also examine the changes in activity structures throughout the manufacturing sector, where for years now we have been seeing an accelerating shift away from traditional production operations and towards more service-oriented activities.KeywordsHuman CapitalService SectorEmployment GrowthBusiness ServiceService InnovationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.