The major role of the weights of industry and services in the economy

Since the late 1990s, the weight of industry in the OECD economy has declined markedly, due to the shift in the structure of demand towards services. This development has had very significant consequences: Shift in the structure of jobs towards low-skilled service jobs; Slowdown in productivity gains. However, since the beginning of the COVID crisis, there has been a sharp increase in demand for industrial products at the expense of demand for services, due to the impossibility of consuming certain services and the need for IT equipment. This reversal of the previous long-term trend of a fall in the weight of industry in the economy explains the appearance of bottlenecks for all intermediate consumption in industry (commodities, semiconductors, maritime transport).