Information Services in the U.S. Economy: Values, Jobs, and Management Implications

California Management Review, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2008

Posted: 11 Sep 2008

See all articles by Uday Apte

Uday Apte

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Uday S. Karmarkar

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Anderson School of Management

Hiranya K. Nath

Sam Houston State University - College of Business Administration - Department of Economics and International Business

Date Written: September 9, 2008

Abstract

It is well known that almost all of the largest economies in the world are already dominated by services. What may be less well known is that many are also evolving towards becoming information economies in the sense of both value added (GNP) and jobs. Of course, this evolution is less advanced in some countries, but the US is already well past the 60% mark in terms of economic value added. We further explore the confluence of these two trends, by examining the double dichotomy of products versus services and information versus material (non-information) outputs which divides the economy into four super-sectors. We do this by analyzing data on US GNP in 1992 and 1997 and the US job market (employment and wage rates by 821 occupational categories) in 1999. The main conclusions are that the US job market is also dominated by information work, that the largest part of the US economy in terms of GNP value added (in 1997) is the "information services" super-sector, that the largest job share in terms of the number of jobs is in the "material or non-information" jobs in services but the largest share of the wage bill (in 1999) is in information related jobs in services. Interestingly, the highest level of wages per worker is in information intensive tasks in product sectors. We discuss the reasons behind these trends, identify major differences between information and non-information sectors, and share our preliminary thoughts on the implications for management strategy in the information economy.

Keywords: Information economy, information services, material/information dichotomy, product/service dichotomy

JEL Classification: E01, E24, M15, M54

Suggested Citation

Apte, Uday and Karmarkar, Uday S. and Nath, Hiranya K., Information Services in the U.S. Economy: Values, Jobs, and Management Implications (September 9, 2008). California Management Review, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1265809

Uday Apte (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Uday S. Karmarkar

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Anderson School of Management ( email )

110 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
United States

Hiranya K. Nath

Sam Houston State University - College of Business Administration - Department of Economics and International Business ( email )

SHSU Box 2118
Huntsville, TX 77341-2118
United States

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