Economix Blog: Job Losses Across the Developed World

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Across the developed world, the biggest job losses in the 2008-9 downturn were in mining, manufacturing and utilities, according to new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Here’s a chart showing job losses and gains by sector for a selection of developed countries. Bars above the horizontal axis show industries that added jobs, and bars below the axis show industries that lost jobs. The red bars refer to jobs lost in mining, manufacturing and utilities:

Source: O.E.C.D., Structural Analysis (STAN) Database, O.E.C.D. National Accounts Database and national statistical institutes, June 2011. Statlink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932484797

Across the entire O.E.C.D., job losses in this sector equaled 35.3 percent of total employment changes in 2008 and 2009.

The biggest gains, by contrast, were in community, personal and social services (the light blue bars).

This is probably no surprise to people who have been following job trends in the United States, where the health industry has been going gangbusters in both good and bad economies. But actually growth across the broader sector has been smaller in the United States than elsewhere in the developed world.

In the United States, growth in community, personal and social services totaled 8.2 percent of overall employment changes in 2008-9, whereas across all O.E.C.D. member countries this supersector added jobs that equaled 18.3 percent of total job changes during the same period.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a6c46e7ee558db6027807552010f6d7f