Share of workforce vs. share of job creation, by sector.
1s per year
196819751980198519901995200020052010201520202025
1968
Total Jobs—
Participation Rate—
College Degrees—
Homicide Rate—
Fed Funds Rate—
Unemployment (U-3)—
Inflation (CPI)—
GDP Growth—
S&P 500—
% of workforce
Job creation (positive)
Job creation (negative)
Every month, every newsroom in the country gets the Employment Situation Summary, writes "economy added 116,000 jobs," and moves on. But when you break the number down by sector — and compare each sector's share of the workforce to its share of the new jobs — the story changes completely.
How to read this chart
Each sector has two bars. The blue bar shows that sector's share of the total workforce — this stays relatively stable year to year. The second bar shows that sector's share of the year's total job creation: green means the sector added jobs, red means it shed jobs.
A red bar doesn't mean everyone in that sector lost their job. It means more people left than were hired — the sector shrank. The percentage shows how large that loss was relative to the entire economy's net job creation. When a sector shows -97%, its losses nearly cancelled out all the jobs the economy added that year. Percentages can exceed ±100% when a single sector's gains or losses are larger than the economy's total.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, CES (seasonally adjusted, December-to-December). Post-benchmark revision Feb 2026. BLS API v2, April 10 2026.
58 years of data. No gaps. No cherry-picking. Every year, 1968–2025.