🔍 Read the full analysis: The Many Jobs Found In Three Familiar Sectors on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
ThorstenMeyerAI.com has launched Work After Work, a 60-episode series about how economies and work have changed. Its opening episode explains the three-sector model and cites historical estimates showing the long shift from farming toward services, while identifying a proposed future automation sector as the author’s thesis, not an established fact.
ThorstenMeyerAI.com published the first episode of its planned 60-part Work After Work series on November 2, outlining how employment has shifted among farming, manufacturing and services. The installment uses historical estimates to explain the three-sector model and frames the series’ larger question: how automation may change the kinds of work people do.
The opening episode divides economic activity into three broad sectors: primary work, which takes resources from nature; secondary work, which makes goods or builds infrastructure; and tertiary work, which provides services. Farming, manufacturing and retail are familiar examples, though the author notes that classifications can vary. Mining, for instance, is placed in different sectors by different statistical systems.
The series cites estimates showing the scale of the employment shift. In figures attributed to economic historian Stanley Lebergott, farming accounted for 73.7% of the U.S. labor force in 1800, 12.0% in 1950 and 1.5% in 2025 in a separate International Labour Organization modelled estimate. The source also reports that the ILO’s modelled estimates put services ahead of farming in global employment from 2001 onward.
The episode says the series will examine how work has moved between sectors and which kinds of work may remain human as machines take on more tasks. The author’s suggestion that automation could eventually form a separate sector and perform up to 90% of work is explicitly presented as a thesis, not a confirmed forecast. The source says the idea is scheduled for scrutiny in episode 48.
Why Sector Shifts Matter
The three-sector framework gives readers a way to understand a major change in working life: economies can produce food and manufactured goods with a smaller share of workers in those activities, while employment grows in other areas. The figures in the episode illustrate that change in the United States and in examples from China and Japan. They do not, by themselves, explain every cause or capture every difference between countries.
The subject matters now because debate about automation often focuses on jobs that may disappear. The series sets that question against earlier shifts in employment, including the movement away from agriculture. That history can inform the discussion, but it does not prove that future technologies will create enough new work, or that displaced workers will find it. The author’s automation-sector proposal remains a claim to be tested, not a measured outcome.
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How Economists Drew Three Sectors
The source traces the terminology to economic writing in the 1930s and 1940s. New Zealand economist Allan G. B. Fisher is credited with adding “tertiary” to the primary and secondary categories. His book The Clash of Progress and Security was written in 1934 and published in 1935. Colin Clark compared employment patterns across countries in The Conditions of Economic Progress, published in 1940, and described workers moving from agriculture into manufacturing and services.
French economist Jean Fourastié later argued that services could absorb workers freed by technological progress in other sectors. The episode presents that argument as historical context, not as proof that the transition is automatic or painless. It also notes a qualification in Clark’s account: the employment share of industry can rise and later fall.
The categories are useful but broad. A software engineer employed by a carmaker, for example, may be counted differently depending on the statistical system. The source also contrasts declining factory employment with continuing production: it says U.S. factory jobs are about 35% below their June 1979 peak, while inflation-adjusted manufacturing output in 2025 was about 1.9 times its 1979 level. Those measures describe different things—jobs and output—and should not be treated as interchangeable.
“from agriculture to manufacture, and from manufacture to commerce and services”
— Colin Clark, as summarized by Thorsten Meyer
Limits of the Historical Comparisons
The figures cited come from different sources, dates and methods. Lebergott’s U.S. historical estimates and the ILO’s modelled 2025 estimate are not a single uninterrupted series, and the source does not provide enough detail here to compare their methodology directly. The article’s international examples also use different national data and time spans.
It remains unclear how the series will define the claim that automation could do “up to 90% of the work,” including what counts as work, which tasks are included and over what period. The source labels this a thesis and gives no supporting forecast or measurement in the opening episode. The precise episode schedule and the evidence to be used when the thesis is examined are also not specified.
The Series Turns to Automation
Work After Work is described by its publisher as a daily series of 60 episodes about how economies are built, how work has shifted and what work may remain human as machines take on more tasks. The opening installment establishes the sector framework for that discussion. According to the source, episode 48 will put the author’s proposed automation-sector thesis on trial. The publisher has not supplied further dates or episode details in the material provided.
Key Questions
What is Work After Work?
It is a planned 60-episode daily series from ThorstenMeyerAI.com about economic sectors, changes in employment and automation.
What are the three sectors?
The primary sector takes resources from nature, the secondary sector makes goods or builds, and the tertiary sector provides services. Statistical systems do not always classify every activity the same way.
What does the episode say about U.S. farming employment?
It cites Lebergott’s estimate that farming accounted for 73.7% of the U.S. labor force in 1800 and 12.0% in 1950. It separately cites an ILO modelled estimate of 1.5% for 2025.
Is automation already a fourth economic sector?
No such conclusion is established in the source. The possibility that automation could become a distinct sector is the author’s thesis, which the series says it will examine in episode 48.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
