11 Most Profitable Industries in the World

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If you ever wondered what is the best industry to be in, our list of most profitable industries in the world will give you the answer. Maybe it isn’t too late to change your career choice after all.

Industry in its most plain definition is the production of goods or services within the economy. There are many classifications of industries, but the three-sector theory is the most common one. This theory divides industry branches into three sectors: primary, secondary and tertiary. To the primary sector belong all the industries that directly make use of natural goods like agriculture, mining, fishing, etc. Manufacturing industries belong to the secondary sector and providing services make the tertiary sector. In the recent years, some authors are claiming that there are two more sectors: quaternary belonging to knowledge and quinary sector for culture and research.

11 Most Profitable Industries in the World

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Industries are integral parts of most countries and societies and employ the majority of the population. Depending on the country’s development, differences between percentages of the workforce in each industry sector can be major. In developed countries, most people work in the tertiary sector. In the USA for example, 70% of the working population works in the service sector, making them the most profitable ones, which you may have noticed in our list of most profitable industries in America. This high rate of the workforce in service sector enabled the USA to be the second largest industry force by industrial output in 2015 in the world. China ranks first with industrial output in 2015 being 4,922 billion USD.

All these information have shown us how important industry is for the economy of a certain country. Now let us see in our list of most profitable industries in the world below, which of the industries are paying off the most. To find out, we used the report made by Sageworks, a financial information company, who ranked all industries by net profit margin in 2015. Net profit margin is “the percentage of revenue remaining after all operating expenses, interest, taxes and preferred stock dividends (but not common stock dividends) have been deducted from a company’s total revenue.”

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