Employment in Agriculture

Max Roser

Around one-quarter of the world’s labor force work in agriculture. In many low-to-middle-income countries, the majority work in farming and rely on it as their primary source of income.

A few centuries ago, this was the reality in rich countries too.

As countries get richer, the share of the population working in agriculture tends to decline as people move towards employment in industry and services.

Even among farmers, there are very large differences in incomes and productivity levels. The value added per worker can vary as much as ten-fold between countries.

On this page, you find our data and visualizations on employment in agriculture.

Interactive Charts on Employment in Agriculture

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Max Roser (2023) - “Employment in Agriculture” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture' [Online Resource]

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@article{owid-employment-in-agriculture,
    author = {Max Roser},
    title = {Employment in Agriculture},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2023},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture}
}

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