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Chapter II
Changes in EU Industrial
structure
The objective of this chapter is to describe the industry
structure in the EU as a whole and also in individual EU member
states. The description is made in terms of value added and
employment for the different sectors. It includes descriptive
statistics covering the breakdown of the economies by sectors
in Section II.1. Section II.2 then introduces two different
taxonomies based on skills and technology. In Section II.3,
descriptive statistics on the size distribution of firms, in terms
of employees, in the various sectors are introduced. Section
II.4 contains a brief discussion of the increased tendency of
manufacturing firms also to supply services. The chapter ends
with an analysis of how developments in one sector spill over
to other sectors in the economy, Section II.5.
II.1 The shares of industries and
sectoral specialisation in the EU
The industrial structure of the economy is the result of
long‑term trends in sectoral growth where each sector’s share
of employment and value added is determined by productivity
growth, the structure of demand and international trade.
Chapter III analyses the growth of sectors from a long‑term
perspective and Chapter I focuses on the most recent
developments. This section outlines the distribution across
sectors of total value added in the EU. This approach reflects
the relative importance of the industries and provides a basis
for analysing the specialisation of Member States.
The sectors analysed in this report are determined by the
statistical nomenclatures used, by the different levels of
aggregation chosen for the analysis, and by the availability
of data. Analyses of industrial structure at a certain level of
aggregation imply that some sectors will be only partially,
or not at all, recognisable in this report, either because no
data are available at detailed level or because the statistical
classification does not reflect the reality of the sector. One
example is manufacture of computers, electronic and
optical products, for which some data are not available for
manufacturing of optical products and manufacturing of
computers separately. Other cases are economic activities
which encompass manufacturing and repair activities under
the same heading. Examples of these are building and
repairing of ships and boats and manufacturing of aircraft
and spacecraft. While NACE Rev. 2 brought a higher level of
disaggregation in certain sectors compared to NACE Rev. 1,
many economic activities cannot be split into detail. This
means that different trends and performances of sub‑sectors
are hidden behind larger aggregates.
ii11 structural change in the Eu
The EU industrial structure develops according to the
long‑term trend of an increased services sector at the expense
of the manufacturing sector. Market services have grown to
represent 50 % of the EU economy in 2009 from 46 % of EU
GDP in 1997. The share of non‑market services also increased
from 22 % in 1996 to reach 24 % in 2009. Construction, as
well as mining and quarrying, roughly remained stable
at 6 % and 1 % respectively. The shares of manufacturing
decreased from 20 % to 15 % between 1997 and 2009 while
the shares of agriculture dropped more moderately from
and 3 % to 2 %. Market services and manufacturing generally
evolved in opposite directions: the former increased its
overall share by 4 percentage points while the latter lost
symmetrically 5 percentage points, cf. Figure II.1.
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