The importance of services for the domestic economy can be viewed from three perspectives: national accounts decomposition into major spending groups (consumption, investment, government spending, and net ex- ports); production groups, as measured by GDP decomposed by industry of origin; and characteristics of the labor force, as measured by sector or occupation.
First, consider the spending groups. Services account for about 60 per- cent of real personal consumption expenditure. In real gross domestic in- vestment, there is no breakdown for services, but if treated as a service, software accounts for about 16 percent of real nonresidential gross private domestic investment.1 In international trade, net exports of services con-