Manufacturing's share of GDP inversely linked to services per person.
Comparing Services, value added (constant 2015 US$), per capita with Manufacturing, value added (current LCU), per unit of GDP across 188 countries, 2015–2025.
- Rank correlation
- -0.59
- Holding size constant
- -0.47
- Countries compared
- 188
- Period
- 2015–2025
What might link these
As manufacturing's contribution to GDP increases, the value of services per person tends to decrease, even after accounting for population and GDP size. This might reflect different national development paths, where economies heavily reliant on manufacturing may have less developed or smaller service sectors per capita.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. The relationship could be driven by a country's overall stage of economic development, which influences both manufacturing's share and service sector growth.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.