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Keywords
work in the United States, where, manufacturing, service industries, work ethic, working women.
Vocabulary
reconcile, hypothetical, digression.
The topic of work in the United States is an interesting one because the statistics do not always agree with popular general impressions about American workers and the American economy.
I will try to reconcile these impressions with what we know from some recent statistics.
To get you warmed up, let me give you a few questions to think about before I start the first point of our lecture today.
Do you think most Americans work in factories that produce goods for domestic use and exportation?
Do you think most American women are housewives or do most of their work outside the home?
Do you think people in the United States work hard? If time permits, I'll deal with each of these points in today's lecture.
So then, where do most people in the United States work? If you thought in the manufacturing sector, in other words, in factories, you were wrong.
It is true that the United States is and is seen as, a strong industrial power. But the statistics reveal that another branch of the economy is even stronger than manufactory.
Instead of dealing with the large figures required when discussing a total US workforce of 125 million people, let's take a look at 100 hypothetical workers and see where they are employed.
Of those 100 workers, 16 work in manufacturing, that is, in producing goods, another 4 work in construction, and 3 work in agriculture, forestry and fishing, and 1 out of 100 workers is employed in mining.
You might find the figures for manufacturing and agriculture surprisingly low and in a sense they are.
