Service Jobs - Management

Management of Companies and Enterprises

This sector is the oddball of the NAICS classification system. An important reason for defining a management sector comes from the emphasis on reporting data and information at the establishment level. A firm can have many establishments scattered around at different locations where some establishments within the larger firm might be just head offices or administrative offices. Other establishments might be doing the firm’s productive work with some management, but establishments primarily engaged in managing get their own sector.

The management of companies and enterprises sector employs 1.86 million as of 2010, 196 thousand more than 1990. Over 95 percent of employment in this sector is in establishments that only administer, oversee or manage other establishments, or do the administrative work for establishments that actually do something like manufacture products or provide services. The remaining few percent of jobs are at holding companies that own the stocks of one or more other companies in order to control them.

In this, a managerial sub sector, management jobs have 18.3 percent of all the jobs, which accounts for 349 thousand management positions. In the national economy a little over 4.7 percent of America’s jobs are classified as part of managerial occupations like general and operations manager, marketing manager, sales manager and so on. Even though lots of managerial jobs are filled with people moving from professional jobs, management occupations remain distinct from professional occupations. A civil engineer who works as a manager of civil engineers works in a management occupation, even though civil engineer is a profession. The bachelor degree plus work experience category amounts to a managerial skill category because over 82 percent of jobs in this skill category are in one or another of management occupations.

Management and Professional occupations make up almost all of America’s jobs that use college degree skills. If we total all of the jobs in the service economy where a four year college degree or additional master’s, doctorate or professional degrees are required in the skills taxonomy, the total comes to 25.8 million for 2010. That is 25.8 million out of the total of 112.1 million service providing jobs.

With a 112.1 million service jobs to divvy up Management of Companies and Enterprises has only 1.86 million jobs or 1.44 percent of establishment employment. It helps a little but not much. Job growth here over the last 15 years is less than half the national average so not many new jobs can be expected in this sector.

So far we have looked at the jobs in service sectors of education, professional- scientific-technical services, health care, social services and the management of companies. We found 15.8 million jobs that use college degree skills, which are 61.2 percent of the 25.8 million jobs using college degree skills just mentioned. There are 71.8 million jobs left in 12 more service sectors, but only 10 million professional jobs that go in them. With major service providing sectors behind us we are running short of professional employment. We have not looked at financial services. That will be next.