Strategies for product lifetime extension and product use intensification, e.g. repair and re-use services, renting, sharing, result-oriented services, contribute to slowing down and reducing substance flows. They diminish the amount of products needed to accomplish given demand. The assumption that ensuing job losses in production are (over)compensated by increased service intensity on downstream stages of the life cycle has not been convincingly proven yet. Current prognoses rely on abolition of the present discrimination of labour at the expense of increasing costs of natural ressources. On the one hand, concepts focussing on durability and prolongation of the useful life of products may directly benefit from such a change in terms of growing employment in labour-intensive services. On the other hand, strategies of consumption without ownership may still face considerable institutional, organisational, psychological and social barriers.