Video Games

October 20, 2011 — The Editors

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 72 percent of households in the United States own a video game machine. Initially video games were targeted to males, but by 2010 48 percent of gamers were female. And, although nearly all children aged 12-17 play video or computer games, the average gamer is 37 years old. Nearly one third of gamers are older than 50.

Data show the amount consumers spend on video games in the United States. To provide some perspective, in 2010, worldwide motion picture ticket sales totaled $31.0 billion. Figures for 2012 are projected.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010 and 2012
Market Size: $25.1 billion and $70.0 billion
Source: Thomas L. McDonald, “Get in the Game,” The Catholic Times, October 1-7, 2011, page 6
Original Source: Entertainment Software Association
Posted on October 20, 2011

Posted in Entertainment, Movies, Personal Services, Video. No Comments »

The Business of Weddings

October 5, 2011 — The Editors

Today’s market size is an estimate of the size of the entire wedding industry in the United States—we take some license in using the word “industry” here. The things included in measuring the size of the wedding industry are many, from planning, apparel and jewelry through the ceremony, flowers, food, reception and honeymoon.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: $47.2 billion
Source: Toon Van Beeck and George Van Horn, “Wedding Bells are Ringing,” The RMA Journal, December 2010-January 2011, page 22-27, available online here.
Original source: IBISWorld
Posted on October 5, 2011

Posted in Apparel, Clothes, Entertainment, Food Service, Metals, Personal Services, Shoes, Travel. No Comments »

Nonemployer Professional, Scientific and Technical Services

September 13, 2011 — The Editors

We recently posted the size of the professional, scientific and technical services market in the United States, here, and today we add detail to that market post by offering the size of a subset of the market. Today we show the revenue for all nonemploying firms in this service industry which represents 8.6% of the total revenue generated by professional, scientific and technical service providers in 2009. Most nonemployer firms are individual proprietorships but some are partnerships and even corporations. The point is, they have no paid employees. There were 21 million such firms in the United States in 2009, 18.7 million of them were individual proprietorships.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $118.3 billion
Source: “2009 Nonemployer Statistics: Geographical Area Series: Nonemployer Statistics by Legal Form of Organization: 2009,” one of the many offerings on the Census Bureau’s American FactFinder platform, available here.
Original source: U.S. Census Bureau
Posted on September 13, 2011

Posted in Business Services, Employment, Personal Services, Professional Services. No Comments »

Professional, Scientific and Technical Services

August 18, 2011 — The Editors

Professional Services

The sector of the U.S. economy that has been growing most strongly over the last decades is the Service Sector. The service sector includes all those things that provide services instead of goods so, accountants, architects, computer programmers, consultants, doctors, hair stylists, lawyers, teachers and truckers to name but a few of the activities performed by those in the Service Sector. The Census Bureau divides the Service Sector into eleven major categories and our market size today is one of those: Professional, Scientific and Technical Services, an industry whose revenues in 2009 represented 21.6% of all Service Industry revenues.

Over the period shown in the graph, 1998—2009, businesses providing professional, scientific and technical services saw their revenue grow by 85.3% which is 42.7% ahead of inflation.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 1998 and 2009
Market size: $751.3 billion and $1,378.3 billion
Source: Services Annual Survey 2009, “Tables 1.1 Selected Service Industries – Estimated Revenue for Employer and Nonemployer Firms: 2005 through 2009,” and “Table 1.2 Selected Service Industries – Estimated Revenue for Employer Firms: 2005 through 2009,” pages 4 and 6, February 2011, available online here. Data in the graph are from earlier editions of this report series, links to which are available on a Census Bureau web page here.
Original source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Burea of the Census

Posted in Business Services, Personal Services, Professional Services. 1 Comment »

Time Banks

June 24, 2011 — The Editors

In the 1980s while at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Dr. Edgar S. Cahn, a civil rights lawyer and activist, conceived the time banking system, a modern-day bartering system. For each hour members provide services to other members, they are credited with one hour of time that they can then use to request services from other members. Cahn came back to the United States to implement his idea and time banks popped up all across the USA in inner city neighborhoods over the next decade.

Soon Japan took interest and by the mid-1990s interest was building in the United Kingdom. The first time bank in the United Kingdom was started in 1998. According to TimeBanking UK, there are currently hundreds of time banks—although in a modified version from what Cahn conceived—operating in Japan. In the United Kingdom there are 105 active time banks and 131 in development. Since then, time banking has become popular in many more countries.

The market size presented below represents the number of time banks in the United States that are members of TimeBanks USA (founded by Edgar S. Cahn) and the MI Alliance of Timebanks.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2011
Market Size: 92
Source: “TimeBanks USA Member Directory,” TimeBanks USA, available online here; “TimeBanks throughout Michigan,” MI Alliance of Timebanks, available online here; “About > History,” TimeBanking UK, available online here; “‘TimeBanks’ Sprouting Up in Metro Detroit,” CBS Detroit, June 22, 2011, available online here.

Posted in Banking, Barter-like systems, Personal Services. 10 Comments »

Cosmetic Surgery

April 28, 2011 — The Editors

In China, even a small percentage of the population can be a very large number. This may explain how, according to the source, China is now the third largest national consumer of cosmetic surgery when calculated by number of procedures performed annually. Today’s market size is the estimated value of cosmetic surgical procedures performed in China last year.

Geographic reference: China
Year: 2010
Market size: $2.3 Billion
Source: LaFraniere, Sharon, “For Many Chinese, New Wealth and a Fresh Face,” The New York Times, April 24, 2011, page 6
Original Source: Chinese Government estimates
Posted on April 28, 2011

Posted in Health Care, Personal Services, Skin Care Products. No Comments »

e-Filing in the United States

April 19, 2011 — The Editors

Individual income tax returns were due for 2010 yesterday. A large number of these tax returns are now filed electronically, in 2010 e-filing accounted for 69.3% of all individual income tax forms filed for the tax year 2009. Today’s market size is the number of those returns files as of December 31, 2010. The IRS expects this figure to rise for coming tax years. Of the returns filed electronically last year, 35.3% were filed by the filer him or herself and the remaining 64.7% were filed by a professional preparer.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: 98,740,000 Individual Tax Returns for tax year 2009
Source: “2010 Filing Season Statistics,” an online report made available online by the
IRS here.
Source: U.S. Internal Revenue Service

Posted in E-Commerce, Information Technology, National Infrastructure, Personal Services. No Comments »

Sleep Clinics and Centers

March 24, 2011 — The Editors

Sleep for many is an illusive thing, making life very difficult and for some few the inability to sleep can be so complete that it leads to death. The fatal and extremely rare sleeping disease is called Fatal Familial Insomnia (IFF). Thankfully, for most people suffering from sleep disorders, there are a variety of remedies that may be tried to isolate the cause of the problem and then treat it. This is done, for the most troubled sleepers, in sleep clinics and centers. The market size listed below is an industry estimate of what those clinics and sleep centers will earn in 2011. Another interesting item related to sleep, in 2008, 56 million prescriptions for sleeping pills were written in the United States, representing a sharp increase over the proceeding years.

Wishing you sweet dreams.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2011
Market size: $4.5 Billion
Source: Max D. T., “The Secrets of Sleep,” National Geographic, May 2010, page 81.
Posted on March 24, 2011

Posted in Health Care, Personal Services. No Comments »

Diagnostic Testing Laboratories

January 19, 2011 — The Editors

The market for all things medical appears to be on a steady rise in the United States and the services of diagnostic testing laboratories no exception. According to the source article, one of the hot trends in this industry is genetic-testing which is done by scanning the DNA of a “consumer” in order to check for any signs of irregularity that may be a pointer to potential and specific diseases or health conditions to which the consumer may be at higher risk than the general public. The government has begun to look at this industry more closely, as these tests can offer results that are contradictory or misleading.

Based on our earlier market size posts on the diagnostic laboratory industry, we assume that this market size includes both medical testing laboratories as well as diagnostic imaging services, which are listed in detail here.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $60 Billion
Source: Wall Street Journal, page B1, July 23, 2010
Original Source: Washington G-2 Reports

Posted in Health Care, Personal Services. 1 Comment »

Fortune Telling Services

January 3, 2011 — The Editors

A desire to know the future, to be able to make desicions with a firmer idea of what is to come, is a desire one finds in most human communities of all sorts. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 1 in 7 Americans consulted a psychic or fortuneteller in 2009. The market size presented below is the amount spent by Thais annually on visits to traditional fortune tellers.

Here’s hoping 2011 is a very good year!

Geographic reference: Thailand
Year: 2008
Market size: $63 Million
Source: “When the Spirits Talk, As They Frequently Do, Thais Are Eager to Listen,” The New York Times, January 1, 2011, page A1.
Original Source: Kasikorn Research Center in Bangkok.

Posted in Personal Services. No Comments »
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