Editing Service sector

The '''service sector''' is one of the three main industrial categories of a developed [[economy]], the others being [[manufacturing]] and [[agriculture]]. The service sector consists of the "soft" parts of the economy such as [[insurance]], [[tourism]], [[banking]], [[retail]] and [[education]].

''The term [[service economy]], by contrast, refers to a model wherein everything is treated as a service and there is no such thing as a product or commodity - manufacture and agriculture treated themselves as service sectors.''

Economies tend to follow a developmental progression that takes them from a heavy reliance on agriculture, toward the development of [[industry]] (e.g. automobiles, textiles, shipbuilding, steel, mining) and finally toward a more service based structure. Whereas the first economy to follow this path in the modern world was the [[United Kingdom]], the speed at which other economies have later made the transition to service-based, sometimes called post-industrial, has accelerated over time.

Manufacturing tends to be more open to [[international trade]] than services. As a result, there has been a tendency for the first economies to industrialize to come under competitive attack by those seeking to industrialize later, e.g. because production, especially [[labour (economics)|labour]], costs are lower in those industrializing later.  The resultant shrinkage of manufacturing in the leading economies might explain their growing reliance on the service sector.