CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The occupation employing the greatest share of American workers is paper pushers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Well, technically the bureau reports that a plurality of workers — 16.9 percent — are employed as “office and administrative support,” but you get the idea. Here’s a chart from a new report on occupational employment:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment and Wages, 2010.” Excludes farming, fishing, and forestry occupations because the report does not cover the majority of the agricultural sector.

The Labor Department predicts that many of the jobs in this group — for example, mail clerks and proofreaders — will be replaced by automation in the next few years. Occupations in customer service, however, are expected to add about 399,500 by 2018 “as businesses put an increased emphasis on building customer relationships,” according to the bureau’s Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5bfec5b1e331929dc55160650c5495a1