The Bureau of Labor Statistics' in the US recently published numbers for how many people are employed in various areas of the economy can break this down slightly differently than how they do it, according to producers (those who are creating things of value) and those who are either consumers or whose jobs directly depend on the producers (accountants, lawyers, etc). Using their numbers:
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Producers
13,643,000 Manufacturing
3,010,000 Information (it might be a stretch to include all of these jobs...)
751,000 Mining and logging
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17,404,000
Consumers
22,387,000 Government
13,682,000 Leisure and hospitality
21,467,000 Wholesale and retail
18,036,000 Professional and business services
18,699,000 Education and health
8,228,000 Financial
4,532,000 Transportation
7,338,000 Construction
5,516,000 Other services
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119,885,000
Total workers = 137,289,000
Which means that the ENTIRE ECONOMY is being carried by only about 13% of the total population (or about 1 out of every 8 people).
Just to be totally clear: if those producer jobs were to go away, the rest of the economy would collapse, even under the best of economic conditions.
Imagine an economy with just a handful of people: a farmer, an accountant, a store clerk and a government worker. The farmer is the only one producing anything. If the farmer goes away, what's left to sell at the store? With no sales, who needs an accountant? With nothing left to tax, there's no way to pay the government worker. The ripple effect is catastrophic -- and importing more stuff from overseas than we sell there just compounds the problem.
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