What’s everyone doing anyway? Sometimes it helps to have a little info about your markets. Not that I’m looking for a new job - I was getting up-to-date on my marketing lingo this afternoon while working on writing an exec-level paper for our marketing guys here at work… and a few clicks later, I was browsing this stuff and found it rather interesting. I always have been the big-picture type. :)

According to May 2006 dept of labor stats, seems that the US labor force consists of about half the 300 million people in the USA. Almost 1 in 4 of these is employed in either healthcare or retail. Other leading industries by number of employees are manufacturing, education, and accomodation/food services. [Detailed Diagram]

Another way to look at it is by size of the business. Personally I’ve always thought of three main categories, and I’m going to steal a few labels that are common in IT market segmentation:

1. enterprise or large companies (1000+ employees)

2. small/medium business or SMB (10-1000 employees)

3. small office/home office or SOHO (1-10 employees)

I’ve worked for companies at each of these sizes and each has a distinctive atmosphere and unique challenges. March 2005 dept of labor stats show the current breakdown in the United States:

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