How Many Jobs Are Available In Consumer Services

Consumer services make up a huge portion of jobs in the US with over 136 million people employed in this sector. It includes a diverse group of jobs ranging from private chefs to event planners, customer service directors, and financial advisors.

Some of these jobs will earn you a good living, but you may be asking yourself, “Are they stable?” Is it a growing industry or a dying one? And if I put all this effort into writing a resume and job searching, is there enough opportunity to make the juice worth the squeeze? Is a career in consumer services a good career path?

If that’s your question, this article is for you.

What Are Consumer Services Jobs

First things first, let’s start with a working definition of consumer services for the purposes of this article. They’re more than just customer service jobs. I’ve worked with many consumer service companies as a recruiter and here is the definition I’ve landed on.

Consumer service jobs are those found in industries that provide a service to someone. This includes retailers who provide a space for others to sell their products and it includes direct-to-consumer services such as automotive repairs and financial advice.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to try and follow the Bureau of Labor Statistics categories for service-providing industries because I pull a lot of data from this source.

Segments of Consumer Services Jobs

In this article, I’m going to break down forecasts and current economic data into these 7 sectors.

Education and Health Services

Common jobs found in this category include teachers, academic advisors, nurses, and home health care aids.

Trade, Transportation, and Utilities

Common jobs found in this category include wholesale buyers, salespeople, retail salespeople, cashiers, inside customer service representatives, truck drivers, rail workers, and electricians.

Professional and Business Services

This category includes legal services, accounting, engineering, and computer systems. You can find a diverse set of jobs from paralegals to management consultants in this category. It also includes common jobs such as landscaping and housekeeping.

Leisure and Hospitality

This category is made up of mostly entertainment companies, food services, and hotels. While jobs at amusement parks, restaurants, and fast food make up the majority of the jobs, you can also find jobs such as personal trainers included in this category.

Financial Services

Common job titles such as loan officers, insurance agents, and tellers can be found in this group. However, it also includes investment banking and real estate.

Information Services

In this group, you’ll find jobs within publishing, the motion picture business, telecommunications, and data processing.

Other Services (because what data set would be complete without a misc category)

This includes quite a few different jobs. Some common ones you may recognize include maintenance roles, laundry services, private chefs, automotive mechanics, and cosmetologists.

If you want to explore more jobs within these categories and the average salary of each, read my article about 46 Consumer Services Jobs and What They Pay.

Overall Outlook for Consumer Services Jobs

Overall, the consumer services industry tends to have a pretty solid outlook for job growth. 23% growth. Four of the seven categories are experiencing growth trends in the number of job openings that exist and there are over 8 million new jobs each month across all seven consumer services sectors. I’ll cover specific growth trends in a later section.

Where are the Most Consumer Services Jobs Located Around the World

The US isn’t the only place with demand for consumer service jobs; however, it was the second largest from what I could find. Here’s a breakdown of the percentage of the population in each country working in the consumer services field.

United Kingdom, 83%

USA, 81%

Canada, 79.5%

France, 78.1%

South Korea, 74.1%

Japan, 73.3%

Germany, 71.8%

China, 45.2%

How Many Jobs Are Available In Consumer Services in USA

Currently, there are over 8 million job openings each month in consumer services with 81% of the US workforce employed in one of these jobs.

Fastest Growing Consumer Services Jobs

We all know what happened in 2020 and since then, growth and decline in many job families and industries have been all over the place. But, with that being said, I’ll do my best to make sense of what I see as the long-term trends with the data we have.

Financial Services - Increasing, but Volatile

Job openings in this category have increased since 2021, but fluctuate quite a bit. While the trend has been upward, there is a lot of volatility in the job market month to month. Currently, there are between 400,000 and 600,000 job openings each month.

This category includes investment services, banking, real estate, and insurance.

Information Services - Steady Increase

While these jobs saw their biggest growth in 2022 with around 300,000 job openings in one month, they are still above 2018-2020 levels with a slight upward trajectory in the number of job openings each month. Today, there are an average of around 200,000 job openings each month in this group of consumer services.

This category includes publishing, motion pictures, telecommunications, and data processing.

Education and Health Services - Steady Growth

This category of jobs has been growing since 2021. It peaked in 2022 with around 2.4 million job openings per month. Today it has leveled off and is holding steady with 1.8 million to 2 million job openings monthly.

Other Services - Steady Growth

There was a dramatic increase in job openings from 2021 through 2022, most likely due to a pandemic rebound; however, growth has remained strong. The number of job openings in this category peaked at 480,000 jobs in one month in 2022 and still is adding around 418,000 jobs monthly today.

Professional and Business Services - Slight Decline

While this category of consumer services still has more new job openings each month than compared to before 2020, it shows a downward trend. Today there are around 1.7 million new jobs each month, down from its peak at around 2.2 million job openings per month.

Leisure and Hospitality - Consistent Decline

Job growth in this category peaked in 2021 most likely as another pandemic rebound and has been on a steady decline since. Job openings are sitting around the same level as pre-2020, declining from 1.9 million in 2021 to 1 million new jobs per month today.

Trade, Transportation, and Utilities - Downward Trend

New job openings have been steadily declining in this category since 2021. In 2021 there were 2.1 million job openings in one month. Today there are only around 1 million job openings per month in this sector.

One interesting point is that while the number of job openings is declining, the number of new businesses in this sector has increased. I speculate that automation may have a part to play in that story.

Hello, World!

Consumer Services Jobs with the Most Job Opportunities

Regardless of the trends, here are the consumer services jobs that have the most job openings today.

Trade, Transportation, and Utilities - 2.1 Million Jobs Per Month

While this category is at the bottom of the list for fastest growth, it is still the largest in terms of number of job openings. Many of these jobs are low-wage jobs in retail. However, nearly half of the job openings are higher paying jobs such as sales, buyers, electricians

Education and Health Services - 2 Million Jobs Per Month

The majority of these jobs are in healthcare with nearly 1.9 million jobs in this category. Only a little more than 100,000 can be found in education services. Unfortunately, many of the healthcare openings are in home health care which tend to be low-wage jobs., and truck drivers.

Number of Monthly Job Openings

Professional and Business Services - 1.7 Million Job Openings Per Month

The majority of the jobs in this category can be found in legal and accounting, followed closely by management consulting.

Leisure and Hospitality - 1 Million Job Openings Per Month

The majority of these jobs can be found in restaurants and fast food with around 830,000 jobs in the food service and hotel space. Entertainment and personal trainers made up around 133,000 job openings.

Financial Services - 600,000 Job Openings Per Month

The banking and insurance category makes up around 400,000 of these job openings with the majority of jobs found in security trading and insurance sales. Real estate job openings were around 200,000 jobs.

Other Services - 418,000 Job Openings Per Month

The majority of the jobs found in this category were automotive mechanics, hair stylists, and cosmetologists.

Information Services - 200,000 Job Openings Per Month

Largest Consumer Services Sectors in the US

While the number of job openings may indicate growth rates of many consumer services jobs, they don’t tell the whole story. I think it’s also important to look at the starting point of each subset of jobs within this space.

In other words, it’s important to examine how many jobs currently exist because it can be an indicator of potential. If the market changes and people start moving jobs, the largest sectors may be likely to have more opportunities.

Below is a breakdown of each consumer services sector and how many people currently work within it as well as how many of those people are in management-level roles.

Trade, Transportation, and Utilities

This is the largest group of consumer services jobs with 28.8 million people working within this group and 4.5 million of them hold management titles.

Education and Health Services

Currently, 26 million people work in these consumer service roles with 3.3 million of them holding management titles.

Number of People Employed

Professional and Business Services

There are 22.9 million people that work in these jobs with 4.8 million having a manager title.

Leisure and Hospitality

You’ll find 16.8 million people employed in this category with 2.1 million having manager titles.

Financial Services

There are 9.2 million people working in these jobs with 2.2 million holding a management title.

Other Services

In the miscellaneous category, there are 5.8 million people employed with 1.1 million having the title of manager.

Information Services

The smallest of the consumer services job sectors employs 3 million people.

Do Consumer Services Jobs Pay Well

It depends. Because the category covers a broad spectrum of jobs, they could pay as low as $30,000 per year or over $200,000 per year.

Some of the best-paying consumer services jobs include investment banking, securities trading, electric and natural gas jobs, publishing, management consulting, legal, accounting, and computer services.

You can read about consumer services jobs and their pay ranges here.

Data Sources

The data used in this article comes from the following sources:

• World Bank

• House of Commons Library

• US Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Aggregate Data from Job Boards including Indeed and ZipRecruiter

While I’ve done my best to synthesize all of the data, please keep in mind that it doesn’t cover consumer services perfectly. Different data sources measure numbers in different ways that make it difficult to compare information, especially from country to country. Even the US labor statistics BLS doesn’t perfectly separate consumer services, but I’ve done my best to exclude data that doesn’t match our working definition.

---

Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a botique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.