Recently I have come across two very intersting lists—the top 10 growth industries and the 10 fastest declining industries. Being in a growth industry is usually a good thing! You get tail winds. Being in a declining industry–well your challenge is to avoid being the buggy whip. Most of us are somewhere in the middle so what do we learn? We learn what customer segments to focus on, where we might want to create alliances, opportunities for new products or even industries to study for some emerging best practice. So here are the lists:
The Good: Top 10 Growth Industries per dailyfinance.com
- Iron Ore Mining
- Investment Banking and Securities Dealing
- Multifamily Homebuilding
- Molybdenum and Other Metal Ore Mining
- Environmental Consulting
- Aluminum Manufacturing
- Car and Auto Manufacturing
- New-car dealers
- Domestic Airlines
- Financial Planning and Advice
The Bad: The Top 10 Struggling Industries by Vault.com; rate of decline 2010-2016
- Apparel Manufacturing -8.5%
- Mills -10%
- Video Post-Production -8%
- Costume/Formal Rental -14.6%
- Newspaper Publishing -18.8%
- Game/Movie Rental -19.3%
- Wired Telecommunications -37%
- Photo Finishing Services -39%
- Record Stores -39.7%
- Manufactured Home Dealers -62%
Any surprises? What would you add to the lists as growth industries or to the list of those that are struggling?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Most of these make complete sense to me except for Domestic airlines as a growth industry and Manufactured homes as a declining industry.
The airline industry is so capital intensive that I would need to understand more about their thinking, especially with the possibility that federal subsidy on smaller airport service potentially going away.
The downturn in the economy seems to help manufactured homes versus hurting them. Maybe there will be a fundamental shift from single family construction to multi-family as listed on the growth list.
One that is missing is elder care and related industries.
I would certainly add defense industries as declining in light of the Super Committee (aka Unilateral Disarmament Committee) actions to come.
Hi Dan, I think your question is fair. All I can tell you for sure it is not about profitable growth. I suspect airline travel is up, and fees are up to the tune of billions of dollars. Thanks for commenting! Have a great weekend.
Hi Jay, thanks for your comments.