Conclusion
Overall it is evident that the relative importance of services and service activity trends in the USA and west Germany is very similar. In other words the activity structure in Germany is indeed “modern”. Also in highly productive areas of production, value adding largely takes the form of service activities. Thus the employment problem in Germany results not from outdated activity structures; the causes are rather those macroeconomic reasons to which the DIW has repeatedly drawn attention7.
German economic policy must ensure that the framework of macroeconomic conditions is changed to allow jobs to be created. Whether these jobs are created in certain branches or activities is of secondary importance. Having said this, in Germany, too, it is to be expected that more than two out of every three new jobs created will be service jobs. Even so, a quarter of new jobs will be created in industry.
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No significant service gap between west Germany and the USA, in:Economic Bulletin, Vol. 33, no. 6, June 1996.
Cf., for instance, McKinsey Global Institute, Removing Barriers for Growth and Employment in France and Germany, Frankfurt-Paris-Washington, 1997.
Cf.Economic Bulletin, op. cit, Vol. 33, no. 6, June 1996, pp. 3–8.
For Germany: German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP); for the USA: Current Regulation Survey (CPS), cf.Economic Bulletin, op. cit., Vol. 33, June 1996, pp. 3–8, as well as Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).
Forestry and fishing activities are included in agricultural activities. Industrial activities include both construction activities and those in the energy sector and mining.
For the USA the longitudinal data set- the “Panel Study of Income Dynamics” (PSID) allows-evaluations of this type only for heads of household and their spouses, as the PSID is a survey of heads of household that generates only limited data on other household members. The information on the spouse of the head of household is relatively detailed, but for other members of the household (e.g. young workers) only rudimentary information is available. Specifically, no information is provided on their activities as employees. The “German Socio-economic Panel” (GSOEP) provides such data for all household members. On the PSID see Martha Hill, The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Newbury Park, London 1992 and Richard V. Burkhauser et al. The Syracuse University PSID-GSOEP-Equivalent Data File-A Product of Cross-National Research, Cross-National Studies in Aging Program Paper, no. 25. The Maxwell School, Syracuse, New York, 1992.
Cf. Economic Trends 1997/98, in:Economic Bulletin, vol. 34, no. 8, August 1997.
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Haisken-DeNew, J.P., Horn, G.A., Schupp, J. et al. Gap in relative importance of service activities closed. Economic Bulletin 34, 7–12 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02684657
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02684657