Value Added: Professional and Business Services

Think of it this way

It is the economy that sells hours of skilled people instead of things.

What is Value Added: Professional and Business Services?

Consulting, engineering, law, accounting, advertising, IT and administrative services for businesses. It is the largest of the named sectors.

How to read Value Added: Professional and Business Services

It has grown to surpass manufacturing and trade. Much of what a company used to do in-house it now buys from outside, and that shift shows up here as growth.

What Value Added: Professional and Business Services means for the market

It is the sector where the best-paid employment outside finance is concentrated, which is why it weighs heavily in the disposable income that sustains consumption.

Where the money flows

GDP can be measured in three ways that give the SAME figure: by spending (who buys), by production (who makes it) and by income (who earns it). This version uses the second: the value added of each industry, which is what it produces minus what it bought from others to produce it. Subtracting those purchases is what avoids counting twice the steel that goes into a car. The “By spending” version of the same chart splits the total the other way, which is why none of its lines match these: they do not measure different things, they divide the same thing differently.

What to watch in Value Added: Professional and Business Services

Its growth explains part of the relative decline of manufacturing that is not deindustrialization but outsourcing.

It does not measure liquidity: it is the part of GDP produced by this sector.