🔍 Read the full analysis: Work Beyond The Desk: Field, Factory, And Office Sectors on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
Get business pricing on tech for your team
- Business-only prices and quantity discounts
- Tax-exempt purchasing
- Multiple users, one account, clear invoices
TL;DR
Thorsten Meyer’s November 2, 2026, article opens a 60-episode series with a history of employment shifting among agriculture, manufacturing and services. The figures it cites show services overtaking farming in global employment in 2001 and U.S. manufacturing output rising even as factory employment fell from its 1979 peak.
Thorsten Meyer has launched Work After Work, a planned 60-episode series on how work and employment have changed, beginning with a history of the shift from agriculture to manufacturing and services. The opening installment uses historical employment estimates to show how workers moved across those sectors and sets up later episodes on technology and automation.
The article organizes economic activity into three sectors: the primary sector, which takes resources from nature, including farming and fishing; the secondary sector, which makes goods and includes manufacturing and construction; and the tertiary sector, which provides services such as transport, health care, education and retail. Meyer says the categories offer a broad, imperfect way to track where people work.
Figures cited in the article show the scale of the shift in the United States. Historian Stanley Lebergott’s estimates put farming’s share of the U.S. labor force at 73.7% in 1800, falling to 12% in 1950. The International Labour Organization’s modelled estimate cited by Meyer puts the share at 1.5% in 2025. The figures come from different sources and periods, so they are not a single uninterrupted series.
Meyer also cites ILO modelled estimates indicating that services have employed more people worldwide than farming since 2001. In a separate comparison, the article says U.S. factory employment is about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while inflation-adjusted manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. The comparison distinguishes the number of people employed from the volume of goods produced.
Why Employment Shifted Sectors
The sector map helps readers see that economic change does not mean work simply disappears when productivity rises in one area. The historical pattern described in the article is a movement of workers: away from farms, then increasingly toward services. That distinction matters in current debates about automation, where changes in tasks, jobs and output are often discussed as if they were the same thing.
The manufacturing comparison is a useful example. Fewer factory workers than at the 1979 peak does not mean less manufacturing output than in 1979, according to the figures Meyer cites. Output and employment can move in different directions as production methods and productivity change. The article does not establish that automation alone caused the employment decline.
For workers and policymakers, the broader question is where displaced or newly entering workers find employment, what skills those jobs require, and whether those roles offer comparable pay and stability. The opening episode frames those issues as the subject of the series rather than resolving them.
Products Worth Considering
Amazon Kindle Scribe (32GB) with Premium Pen, Tungsten
Bose SoundLink Max Bluetooth Speaker
Apple AirPods Pro 3 Wireless Earbuds with Active Noise Cancellation
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
The Origins of the Three-Sector Map
The division into primary, secondary and tertiary activity took shape in economic writing during the 1930s and 1940s. Meyer credits New Zealand economist Allan G. B. Fisher with introducing “tertiary” in a book written in 1934 and published in 1935. Colin Clark compared employment patterns across countries in his 1940 book, while French economist Jean Fourastié argued in 1949 that services could absorb workers made redundant by technical progress in other sectors.
The classification is not applied identically everywhere. Meyer notes that mining is usually grouped with primary activity but was placed in the secondary sector by Clark and is treated that way in Japan’s census. Some work, such as software development inside a manufacturing company, can also be classified differently depending on the statistical system. The categories are useful for broad trends, not a precise account of every job.
The series’ larger theme is the relationship between technology and work. Meyer presents his prediction that automation could become a sector in its own right, potentially doing up to 90% of work without a human hand, as his thesis, not an established fact. He says a later episode will examine that proposition.
““Three boxes. The primary sector takes things from nature … The secondary sector makes things … The tertiary sector serves people.””
— Thorsten Meyer
Limits of the Employment Comparisons
The figures describe broad changes but do not, by themselves, explain why particular jobs declined or grew. The article’s historical U.S. estimates and the ILO’s 2025 modelled estimate come from different sources, and the sector classifications vary across statistical systems. The cited material does not provide a unified methodology for comparing every figure across the full period.
The manufacturing figures also leave questions unanswered: the article gives the employment decline and output comparison but does not break down the roles of automation, trade, changing demand or other causes. Meyer’s proposed future automation sector is a forecast, and the article does not present evidence that such a sector already exists or that automation will perform a specified share of work.
The Series Turns to Machines
Meyer says Work After Work will run for 60 episodes, examining how economies are built, how work has shifted and which tasks may remain human as machines take on more. The opening episode establishes the three-sector framework that later installments are expected to use. Meyer identifies episode 48 as the point when his automation-sector thesis will be put on trial; the source material does not give a publication schedule for that episode or further details about the series’ next installment.
Key Questions
What is Work After Work?
Work After Work is a planned 60-episode series by Thorsten Meyer about economic change, employment shifts and the effects of machines on work. Its first episode was published November 2, 2026.
What are the three sectors in the article?
The primary sector extracts resources from nature, the secondary sector makes goods, and the tertiary sector provides services. The boundaries are broad and can vary across statistical systems.
When did services overtake farming in global employment?
The ILO modelled estimates cited by Meyer indicate that services employed more people worldwide than farming starting in 2001. The article does not give the underlying employment totals.
Does the article say the United States stopped manufacturing?
No. Meyer cites figures saying U.S. factory employment is about 35% below its June 1979 peak, while real manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. Those figures compare employment and output, which are different measures.
Is automation already a separate economic sector?
The article does not establish that. Meyer calls the possibility that automation could become its own sector his thesis and says a later episode will examine it.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
