What's hampering job growth in the District's services sector?

Employment growth in the Tenth District has fallen behind the national rate in 1999 for the first time in ten years. Although all economic sectors have been experiencing slower job growth, the services sector, due to its size, has played perhaps the most important role in the slowdown of overall employment growth in the district. While services employment elsewhere in the nation continues to grow rapidly, the district has witnessed very little job expansion in services so far in 1999 (Chart 1). In fact, the district services sector has added jobs during the first seven months of this year at less than a third of the rate enjoyed by the nation as a whole.