Three-sector model

[1] The model was developed by Allan Fisher,[2][3][4] Colin Clark,[5] and Jean Fourastié[6] in the first half of the 20th century, and is a representation of an industrial economy.

[7] According to the three-sector model, the main focus of an economy's activity shifts from the primary through the secondary and finally to the tertiary sector.

Fourastié saw the process as essentially positive, and in The Great Hope of the Twentieth Century he wrote of the increase in quality of life, social security, blossoming of education and culture, higher level of qualifications, humanisation of work, and avoidance of unemployment.

Workforce quotas: More machinery is deployed in the primary sector, which reduces the number of workers needed to produce a given output of food and raw materials.

The transitional way or phase begins with an event which can be identified with the industrialisation: far-reaching mechanisation (and therefore automation) of manufacture, such as the use of conveyor belts.

[8] Various empirical studies seemingly confirm the three-sector hypothesis, but employment in the primary sector fell far more than Fourastié predicted.

When he conceived of the theory in the 1930s, he did not foresee the technological progress made in the service sector, notably the invention of the computer and the advent of the Information Age.

And yet in the German economy, although the secondary sector has sharply declined since the 1950s, it was not to the level that Fourastié predicted, due to Germany's high exports.

[12] Sometimes referred to as ‘gold collar’ professions,[citation needed] they include special and highly paid skills of senior business executives, government officials, research scientists, financial and legal consultants, etc.