Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

In order to find our way through this vast aggregate of activities, whose growth accounts for much of the improvement in living conditions since the nineteenth century, it will be useful to distinguish several subsectors. Consider first services in health and education, which by themselves account for more than 20 percent of total employment in the most advanced countries (or as much as all industrial sectors combined). There is every reason to think that this fraction will continue to increase, given the pace of medical progress and the steady growth of higher education. The number of jobs in retail; hotels, cafés, and restaurants; and culture and leisure activities also increased rapidly, typically accounting for 20 percent of total employment. Services to firms (consulting, accounting, design, data processing, etc.) combined with real estate and financial services (real estate agencies, banks, insurance, etc.) and transportation add another 20 percent of the job total. If you then add government and security services (general administration, courts, police, armed forces, etc.), which account for nearly 10 percent of total employment in most countries, you reach the 70–80 percent figure given in official statistics.17