Service Jobs - Repair-Main-Personal

The Last Three Services from the Other Sector (revised fall 2024)

There are four sub-sectors that were put into the sector classification called, Other. One was non-profit organizations discussed earlier. The other three service sub sectors have little in common with each other, or non-profit organizations. They are repair and maintenance services, personal and laundry services, and private households.

Repair and maintenance had 1.453 million jobs by 2024 with 70 percent of jobs in car and truck repair. That total includes 182 thousand employed at car washes along with other jobs at bump shops and auto glass replacement. Car crashes reduce our well-being but create jobs and production adding to the gross domestic product.

The rest of repair and maintenance has 347.7 thousand jobs at establishments fixing or maintaining commercial machinery and electronic equipment, or fixing household goods. More than half of these jobs are in the commercial segment. Establishments doing household repairs for lawnmowers, appliances, shoe repair, watch repair, upholstery and a few more have around 86.1 thousand jobs.

Personal services had 1.536 million jobs by 2024. Beauty parlors and barbershops have 402.1 thousand jobs and continue to grow. The rest of the jobs are at funeral parlors, cemeteries, crematories, laundry and dry cleaning, pet care, photo finishing, and parking lots. Laundry and dry cleaning services and photo finishing jobs continue to drop a few thousand jobs a year. Parking lot jobs had a high of 145.7 thousand jobs in 2018 but dropped in the Covid Pandemic and finished 2023 with 124.6 thousand jobs.

Pet care services employment has increased steadily from just 23.1 thousand jobs in 1990 to 183 thousand by 2024. The only occupation with a large number of jobs in the pet care services industry has the Bureau of Labor Statistics definition of non-farm animal caretaker. Their job description turns out to be a list of down to earth activities: train, feed, water, groom, bathe and exercise animals, and clean, disinfect and repair their cages. There are 135 thousand of these jobs and some work at zoos but quite a few classify as personal services, mostly as kennel workers and dog walkers.

Repair and maintenance and personal service firms have very similar staffing in that they all tend to have a manager, a receptionist, an office clerk, a bookkeeper and maybe a secretary or someone else in office administration. After that it is jobs doing services. Few jobs need college degree skills in any of these sub sectors.

Many jobs here in installation, maintenance and repair require training and experience and the best jobs in these sub sectors are doing these occupations. Automotive service technicians and mechanics have 242.2 thousand jobs just in auto repair shops out of 676.6 thousand total jobs. Other auto mechanics work at auto dealerships or for gasoline stations. About another 129.9 thousand do car body repair or replace broken glass out of independent shops.

Electrical and electronics installation, maintenance and repair occupations have 31.2 thousand out of 666.2 thousand jobs. Many of these occupations also have jobs in manufacturing, retail and the telecommunications industries.

Private households are classified as an industry in the North American Industry Classification System because households employ cooks, maids, butlers and caretakers to produce services at households. These services are transactions and production and so they are counted as part of the GDP and given their own sector. They are not counted as part of establishment employment because households are not establishments for purposes of establishment data. The Bureau of the Census reports 672.2 thousand jobs in non-agricultural households with 336.4 thousand jobs as maids and housekeeping cleaners, and 183.4 thousand child care workers and 112.4 thousand home health and personal care aides, which accounts for almost all of private household employment.

With a 134.453 million service jobs to divvy up, repair and maintenance services and personal services employment gives us a total of 2.988 million jobs, but that is only 1.92 percent of service employment. Repair and maintenance services has growth close to the national average while personal services lags behind at a slower growth rate of .96 percent per year from 1990 to 2024. Personal services will continue to lose share even though they have more jobs. We have two sub sectors left to go: accommodation and food services, and government service, excluding education. These two sectors have 25.189 million jobs.