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Primary, Secondary and Tertiary activities in MEDCs and LEDCs

MEDCs (such as the UK) tend to have very little primary industry, some secondary industry and the majority of people working in tertiary or service industries.

LEDCs (e.g. Mali) tend to have most people working in primary industries and very few workers in the secondary and tertiary industries.

The change PST over time for in LEDCs and MEDCs

All countries undergo changes in their economic systems.  The percentage of people working in primary, secondary and tertiary industries can change over time as a country develops.  A decrease in primary sector jobs is caused by

• Improvements in technology allowing machines (mechanisation) to do the jobs of people.  This has been particularly important in agriculture.

• Raw materials such as coal run out or become too expensive to mine.

• Workers prefer well paid less “dirty” tertiary jobs to primary jobs.

• Increased Tertiary employment has resulted from improvements in technology allowing micro electronics, research and biotechnology to grow.

• Secondary industries decline in MEDCs because of competition from Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs like Taiwan) that have cheaper labour costs.

Activities

1a. Can you list 5 jobs for each of the following categories;

• Primary

• Secondary

• Tertiary

• Quaternary
  b. Try this key words matching exercise on Economic Geography

2. Use the world map below to describe which continents and places have the highest and lowest percentages of men employed in agriculture. Why does this distribution/pattern exist?
                                                                                                        Source

3. Draw pie charts using the information below

                   Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

   a)     which of the countries is a MEDC?

b)    Which of the countries is a LEDC?

c)     How can you tell?

4. Look at the triangular graph below and complete the table.