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1 The Changing Structure of World Industry
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6. In recent years, the trend of the 1950s and 1960s has been reversed: Manufacturing has declined in importance relative to other sectors of the economy. In many countries, this decline has been in progress since 1973. It is most noticeable in the case of industrial market economies, but the share of MVA in GDP has also declined in nearly half the 95 developing countries surveyed by UNIDO. This may reflect the growing interaction between industry and all fields of science and technology and the increasing integration of industry and services, as well as industry's ability to produce more with less.

7. The relative importance of industry as an employer has been declining for some time in developed countries, But the shift in jobs towards the service sector has accelerated sharply over the past 15 years with the increasing adoption of new processes and technologies. Economists continue to argue over whether the advent of an information-based economy will further depress employment in industry or ill expand job opportunities overall.

8. Most developing countries started at independence with virtually no modern industry. Then during the 1960s and 1970s their industrial production, employment, and trade consistently /…