Jobs in the tradable sector grew by a mere 620,000 between 1990 and 2008, that’s true. But it could have been worse—they could have declined! That’s what happened between 2000 and 2008; the tradable sector lost about 3 million jobs, while the nontradable sector added 7 million. So the nontradable sector accounted for 7 million jobs out of the total gain of 4 million, or 175%!
