Agriculture | Arts & Entertainment |
Business Services | Construction |
Consumer Discretionary | Consumer Services |
Consumer Staples | Education |
Energy | Financials |
Health Care | Hospitality & Tourism |
Industrials | Information Technology |
Manufacturing | Materials |
Media | Public Sector |
Real Estate | Retail |
Science & Technology | Telecommunications |
Transportation | Utilities |
Primary Sector
The extraction and production of the raw materials needed for goods and services. This produces commodities at a market price whereby producers have no pricing power.
Secondary Sector
The production of finished goods including the manufacturing and construction industries. These firms often have pricing power based on the strength of their designs and brands.
Tertiary Sector
The tertiary sector, better known as the service sector, includes all industries that offer services. These are based on intangible value that has no physical presence. Advanced economies have large service sectors that produce the majority of GDP.
Quaternary Sector
The quaternary sector is the subset of the service sector that is knowledge intensive. This is commonly referred to as the knowledge economy.
Quinary Sector
A concept that has conflicting definitions that sometimes reference "human services" that appears to include all government and non-profit services. At other times, the quinary sector is defined by referencing supposedly high level knowledge services such as "executive decision making." This doesn't align well to any real world industries.
Summary
The classic academic view of economic sectors is a three level model that includes the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. This model dates to the work of Allan Fisher, Colin Clark and Jean Fourastié in the first half of the twentieth century and has since been challenged with a fourth layer known as the quaternary sector that includes knowledge intensive services previously categorized as tertiary. These are all academic concepts. Governments and financial analysts tend to define sectors as major groups of industries that have similar business models such as the following sectors.
