Service Jobs - Management

Management of Companies and Enterprises (revised fall 2024)

This sector is the oddball of the NAICS classification system. An important reason for defining a management sector comes from the emphasis on reporting data and information at the establishment level. A firm can have many establishments scattered around at different locations where some establishments within the larger firm might be just head offices or administrative offices. Other establishments might be doing the firm’s productive work with some management, but establishments primarily engaged in managing get their own sector.

The management of companies and enterprises sector employs 2.56 million as of 2023, 886.4 thousand more than 1990. Just over 90 percent of employment in this sector is in establishments that only administer, oversee or manage other establishments, or do the administrative work for establishments that actually do something like manufacture products or provide services. The remaining 10 percent of jobs are at holding companies that own the stocks of one or more other companies in order to control them.

In this, a managerial sub sector, management jobs have 21.4 percent of all the jobs, which accounts for 548 thousand management positions. In the national economy a little over 6.9 percent of America’s jobs are classified as part of managerial occupations like general and operations manager, marketing manager, sales manager and so on. Even though lots of managerial jobs are filled with people moving from professional jobs, management occupations remain distinct from professional occupations. A civil engineer who works as a manager of civil engineers works in a management occupation, even though civil engineer is a profession. The bachelor degree plus work experience in the related occupation amounts to a managerial skill category because almost 90 percent of jobs with these skills and experience are in one or another of management occupations.

With a 134.453 million service jobs to divvy up Management of Companies and Enterprises has only 2.558 million jobs or 1.64 percent of establishment employment. Job growth since 2010 is 2.23 percent a full percent above the national average for that period. It helps a little but not much.

So far we have looked at the jobs in service sectors of education, professional- scientific-technical services, health care, social services and the management of companies and found 25.084 million jobs that use college degree skills. which are 50.1 percent of the 49.587 million jobs using college degree skills in the U.S. economy. There are 84.059 million jobs left in 12 more service sectors with 24.5 million professional jobs that go in them. With major service providing sectors behind us we are running short of professional employment. We have not looked at financial services. That will be next.