How the American Economy has Changed in the 21st Century [Infographic]

Working with data visualization and business intelligence on a regular basis, we thought it would be interesting to do some analysis of how American industry has evolved just since the year 2000.  Working with our friends at InetSoft, as well as with data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis website (http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_industry.cfm), we began by looking at how the percent of the U.S. GDP made up by various industries has evolved in just over 10 years.

Looking at the data, some interesting trends emerged.  Among them were the fact that U.S. manufacturing accounted for 14.2% of the GDP in the year 2000.  By 2011 manufacturing had declined to the point that it only represented 11.5% of the GDP in 2011. The United Nations lists the 2011 U.S. GDP at $14.99 trillion dollars.  With a number that mind-bogglingly large, it means that had manufacturing still represented 14.2% of the GDP in 2011 (rather than 11.5%), it would have contributed $404 billion dollars more to the economy.  We then noted that $404 billion dollars is equivalent to the entire GDP of nations like Venezuela, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.

Conversely, some sectors of U.S. Industry represent a much larger share of the GDP now than they did in 2011.  Among them are government (up 1% or $149 billion dollars) and educational/healthcare/social services (up 1.9% or $284 billion dollars).  We don’t offer any opinion on whether these changes are good or bad. Instead, we just wanted to come up with a fun and interesting way to visualize some of the changes occurring within the make-up of the American economy since the start of the 21st century. We hope you enjoy!

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