A report by JPMorgan Global Services, for example, notes "conditions in the global service sector are still relatively subdued overall as weaker client confidence, a by-product of ongoing credit and financial market volatility, continues to suppress demand." However, there are signs that the activity levels in the services sector are stabilizing, JPMorgan's team says, adding stable activity should mean stable levels of employment.

While markets with high concentrations of financial services firms are bound to suffer, the reports on the services sector say, office markets with high concentrations of business services and information employers will suffer considerably less. Of course, the studies also mention the service sector is only one part of the economy and that employment figures in general have been worsening, which is bound to have some effect on office markets.

In California, for example, unemployment rose for a fifth straight month to 7.7% in August, the highest rate in more than 12 years and in a state that until recently had weathered the economic troubles well. California's unemployment rate was tied with Mississippi's as the third worst in the nation. The national unemployment rate is 6.1%.

But the services sector constitutes a steadily growing portion of the economy, suggesting a long-term demand for office space. In fact, the importance of service sector jobs to the office market is part of what the US Bureau of Labor Statistics describes as part of "a long-term shift from goods-producing to service-providing employment" in the US economy. That shift is expected to continue, according to the bureau, which estimates service-providing industries will account for about 15.7 million new wage and salary jobs from 2006 through 2016. At the same time, manufacturing industries will register a net loss of jobs, the bureau says.