Services and the people in them

Services exist at different levels:

• Low-order services, such as grocery shops and laundries, are needed often and are found everywhere.
• High-order services, such as accountants, consultants and physicians, are more specialised and found in fewer places.

Some services involve physical labour (a gardener, a barber, a plumber); others need mental skill (a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor).

Many services are regulated or provided by governments or companies: building and maintaining highways and bridges, fire fighting, education, and customer care, along with utilities such as water, electricity and gas.

People-based services, also called personal services, include cleaning, cooking, housework and home repair. In India and other developing countries, many such workers are unskilled migrants from rural areas who come to cities for work.

A famous example: the dabbawalas of Mumbai, who collect lunch boxes (tiffins) from homes and deliver them to offices across the city, and bring the empty boxes back, serving about 1,75,000 customers with remarkable accuracy.

Across the world, the share of people working in services keeps rising, while employment in primary and secondary activities stays the same or falls.