America's labor force changed markedly during the 1990s. Continuing a long-term trend, the number of farmers declined. A small portion of workers had jobs in industry, while a much greater share worked in the service sector, in jobs ranging from store clerks to financial planners. If steel and shoes were no longer American manufacturing mainstays, computers and the software that make them run were. 

     After peaking at $290,000 million in 1992, the federal budget steadily shrank as economic growth increased tax revenues. In 1998, the government posted its first surplus in 30 years, although a huge debt -- mainly in the form of promised future Social Security payments to the baby boomers -- remained. Economists, surprised at the combination of rapid growth and continued low inflation, debated whether the United States had a "new economy" capable of sustaining a faster growth rate than seemed possible based on the experiences of the previous 40 years. 

     Finally, the American economy was more closely intertwined with the global economy than it ever had been. Clinton and Gingrich, like their predecessors, had continued to push for elimination of trade barriers. A North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had further increased economic ties between the United States and its largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico. Asia, which had grown especially rapidly during the 1980s, joined Europe as a major supplier of finished goods and a market for American exports. Sophisticated worldwide telecommunications systems linked the world's financial markets in a way unimaginable even a few years earlier. 

     While many Americans remained convinced that global economic integration benefited all nations, the growing interdependence created some dislocations as well. Workers in high-technology industries -- at which the United States excelled -- fared rather well, but competition from many foreign countries that generally had lower labor costs tended to dampen wages in traditional manufacturing industries. Then, when the economies of Japan and other newly industrialized countries in Asia faltered in the late 1990s, shock waves rippled throughout the global financial system. American economic policy-makers found they increasingly had to weigh global economic conditions in charting a course for the domestic economy. 

     Still, Americans ended the 1990s with a restored sense of confidence. By the end of 1999, the economy had grown continuously since 1994, the longest peacetime economic expansion in history. Unemployment totaled just 4.1 percent of the labor force in November 1999 and has on average even been lower in between 2003-2007.  Rebounding from the “Stock Market Bubble” and recession of the late 90’s was a challenge, but the American Economy moves forward.. Many challenges lay ahead, but the nation had weathered the 20th century -- and the enormous changes it brought -- in good shape.  http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oecon/chap12.htm  

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