🌾 Primary
Extracting raw materials. Examples: farming, fishing, mining and forestry. A wheat farmer, a trawler crew and a copper miner all work in primary industry.
Changing Employment Structures » Types of Industry: Primary to Quaternary
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Cambridge spec: 9.1.1
- The four types of industry: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary
- Clear examples of each type of industry
- How one product, a mobile phone, links all four
- What an employment structure is and how it is shown on a pie chart or triangular graph
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Unlock This CourseClassifying industries
An industry is a group of businesses that make a product or provide a service. Geographers sort industries into four types, depending on what the workers actually do. This is called the classification of industries. You need the name, the meaning and several examples of each one.
Key terms:
- Primary industry: taking raw materials from the land or the sea.
- Secondary industry: making things from raw materials (manufacturing) and building (construction).
- Tertiary industry: providing services to people and businesses.
- Quaternary industry: work with knowledge and information, such as research and development.
- Raw material: a natural resource that has not yet been processed.
- Employment structure: the share of a country's workers who work in each type of industry.
The four types of industry
🏭 Secondary
Making products from raw materials. Examples: manufacturing (cars, clothes, steel, food processing) and construction (building houses and roads).
🛒 Tertiary
Services. Examples: retail (shops), health (nurses, doctors), education (teachers), tourism (hotel and airline staff) and transport (bus and lorry drivers).
🔬 Quaternary
Knowledge and information. Examples: research and development (R&D), IT (software writing, data analysis) and consultancy (expert advice to businesses).
A simple way to remember them is by what the worker does: takes it (primary), makes it (secondary), serves you (tertiary), thinks it up (quaternary).
Sorting a job into the right type
Look at the main task, not the place. A farmer who grows apples is primary. A worker who turns the apples into juice in a factory is secondary. The driver who delivers the juice to a shop is tertiary. A scientist who designs a new way to keep juice fresh is quaternary. They may all work for the same company, but they do four different types of work.
| Job | Type | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Forestry worker | Primary | Takes timber from trees |
| Bricklayer | Secondary | Construction |
| Hotel receptionist | Tertiary | Tourism service |
| Software developer | Quaternary | IT and information |
One product, four industries: a mobile phone
Most products need all four types of industry before they reach you. Follow a mobile phone:
- Primary: miners dig up metals such as copper, lithium and cobalt from the ground.
- Secondary: factories process the metals and join the parts together to make the phone.
- Tertiary: lorries and ships transport the phone, shop staff sell it and call centre staff help customers with problems.
- Quaternary: researchers and designers invent the phone and its software, and IT workers keep apps and data running.
This link between the types is why industries depend on each other. If the miners stop, the factory has nothing to make. If the researchers stop, there are no new phones to sell.
Employment structure
The employment structure of a country tells you what share of its workers do each type of job. It is given as percentages that add up to 100. In the tables and charts below, quaternary workers are counted inside tertiary, so only three sectors are shown.
Pie chart. A circle is divided into slices. Each slice is one type of industry and the bigger the slice, the more workers. In words: "The tertiary slice is the largest, at just over half of the circle, while the primary slice is the smallest."
Triangular graph. This graph has three corners, one each for primary, secondary and tertiary, and it shows all three percentages at once with a single dot. A dot close to one corner means that sector has most of the workers. A dot near the middle means the workers are spread fairly evenly. (Quaternary jobs are usually counted inside tertiary on this graph.) Drawing the graph is covered in a later lesson on triangular graphs.
Worked example
Made-up data for Country Z: primary 8%, secondary 22%, tertiary 70%.
Check: 8 + 22 + 70 = 100, so the figures are complete. The largest share works in tertiary industry (70%). The smallest share works in primary industry (8%). So, on a pie chart, the tertiary slice would take up more than two thirds of the circle. On a triangular graph, the dot would sit close to the tertiary corner.
| Made-up country | Primary (%) | Secondary (%) | Tertiary (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Country P | 70 | 10 | 20 |
| Country Q | 20 | 35 | 45 |
| Country R | 3 | 17 | 80 |
Country P has most workers in the primary sector, so most people probably farm or mine. Country R has most workers in the tertiary sector, so most people probably work in shops, offices and services. Why countries have different employment structures is explained in the next lesson, How Employment Structures Change.
Common mistakes
1. Saying that "secondary" means "second most important". It means the second stage of making a product. 2. Putting construction in tertiary. It is secondary because it makes buildings. 3. Putting mining in secondary because it is heavy work. It is primary because it extracts raw materials. 4. Forgetting that quaternary is about knowledge, not just any office job. A shop assistant is tertiary even if they use a computer.
Exam-style question
Fig. 1.1 shows made-up data for the employment structure of Country K.
| Type of industry | Workers (%) |
|---|---|
| Primary | 12 |
| Secondary | 28 |
| Tertiary | 60 |
(a) Define the term primary industry. [1 mark]
(b) Identify the type of industry that employs the most workers in Country K. [1 mark]
(c) Give two examples of tertiary industry. [2 marks]
(d) Explain how a named product links primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary industries. [6 marks]
Model answer
(a) Taking or extracting raw materials from the land or sea (1).
(b) Tertiary (1).
(c) Any two from: retail, health, education, tourism, transport (1 each).
(d) A top-level answer (5-6 marks) names a product, and names all four industries in order with a clear link between each. Example: Mobile phone. Miners extract metals such as copper from the ground, which is primary industry (1). Factories process the metals and assemble the parts into phones, which is secondary industry (1). The phones are transported, sold in shops and repaired, which is tertiary industry (1). Researchers and software developers design the phone and its apps, which is quaternary industry (1). The industries depend on each other because the factory needs the metals first (1), and the shop cannot sell a phone that has not been made or designed (1).
Exam tip
For a "how a product links the four industries" question, pick a simple product, name the four types in order, and add a linking word such as "then" or "so" between each one to show the chain.