Employment in agriculture: data sources and definitions

Agricultural employment is an important metric used in development. As countries develop and incomes rise, the share of the labor force working in agriculture tends to decline as farming systems become more productive, and people move to other sectors such as industry and services.

At *Our World in Data *we have constructed a long-term series of agricultural employment, combining recent data for every country in the world with historical series for select countries where this data is available.

Here I detail the sources we use to construct this dataset.

We provide a full citation for each of the sources below. If you cite data for a specific period, please cite the original source. For example, for the period 1991 onwards, please cite the International Labour Organization. You can add “via Our World in Data” if you downloaded the data from us.

Employment in agriculture: Our data sources

Up to 1800: Broadberry and Gardner (2013)

The share of the labor force employed in agriculture prior to 1800 is available for a select number of countries.

This data is sourced from the work of Stephen Broadberry and Leigh Gardner (2013), who compile these estimates for different countries from multiple countries. This series contains long-run data for England; in our dataset we have adopted these figures for the United Kingdom as a whole.

Full citation: Stephen Broadberry and Leigh Gardner (2013). Africa’s Growth Prospects in a European Mirror: A Historical Perspective. Online here.

The underlying sources of this data by country are as follows:

• Broadberry, S. N., Campbell, B. M. S., & van Leeuwen, B. (2013), “When Did Britain Industrialise? The Sectoral Distribution of the Labour Force and Labour Productivity in Britain, 1381-1851,” Explorations in Economic History, 50(1), 16–27. Online here.
• Allen, R.C. (2000), “Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300-1800,” European Review of Economic History, 4, 1-26. Online here.

1801 to 1985: Herrendorf et al. (2014)

Data on the number of people employed in agriculture is available for some countries, extending back to 1801.

This data is sourced from the work of Berthold Herrendorf, Richard Rogerson and Ákos Valentinyi (2014).

To preserve a consistent series between Herrendorf et al. (2014) data and the ILO series from 1991 onwards (detailed below), data points from 1986 to 1990 have not been included.

**Full citation: **Berthold Herrendorf, Richard Rogerson and Akos Valentinyi (2014) – “Growth and Structural Transformation” Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 2B.

The authors compile this data from multiple sources, listed below:

List of underlying data sources

Belgium. 1846–1961: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1970–2007: EU KLEMS 2009.

Spain. 1860–1964: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1970–2007: EU KLEMS 2009.

Finland. 1805–1960: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1970–2007: EU KLEMS 2009.

France. 1856–1968: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1970–2007: EU KLEMS 2009.

South Korea. 1953–2005: Groningen Growth and Development Centre 10-sector Database 2007.

Netherlands. 1807–1913: Smits et al. (2007), 1920–1947: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1970–2005: Groningen Growth and Development Centre 10-sector Database 2008.

Sweden. 1850–2000: Krantz and Schön (2007), 2000–2005: Groningen Growth and Development Centre 10-sector Database 2008.

United Kingdom. 1801, 1813–1820 average assigned to 1817, 1851: Broadberry et al. (2011) Table 1 and Table 12, 1841: Mitchell (2007) Table B1, 1861–1938: Feinstein (1972) Table 59–60, 1948–2005: Groningen Growth and Development Centre 10-sector Database 2007.

United States. 1840–1920: Carter et al., eds (2006) Table Ba814–830, 1929–2008: NIPA Table 6.8 Persons Engaged in Production, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Following our methodology, we updated several countries with the January 2015 release of the GGDC 10-Sector Database

1991 onwards: International Labour Organization

The data for all countries from the year 1991 onwards is sourced from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

This data is made available through the World Bank's World Development Indicators.

The ILO publishes statistics on the share of people employed in agriculture, which is a different concept from previous sources that used labor force (labor force = employed + unemployed). It also provides the share of people employed in industry, and services as separate metrics. You can find its database here.

Additionally, we have data around 1980 from the World Bank's earlier employment-share series for France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom based on ILO national estimates, as published in archived editions of the WDI (April 2013 edition).

**Full citation: **ILO Modelled Estimates, via World Bank

Derived metric: Number of people working in agriculture

The ILO publishes data on the share of people employed in agriculture.

Our World in Data has also calculated the number of people employed in agriculture. You can find this chart here.

We had done so based on two metrics published by the ILO via the World Bank:

• Total number of people employed
• Share of people employed in agriculture

We then calculate the number employed in agriculture as:

Number employed in agriculture = Total number of people employed * Share of people employed in agriculture

How is agricultural employment defined?

Employment of any type is quantified as the number of working-age people engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit. This includes those actively working; on temporary job absences, or in another working-time arrangement. Labor from people not of working age – such as child labor – is not included.

In agriculture, this includes employees of agricultural activities and subsistence farmers who produce goods for themselves rather than for the market.

Agriculture in this case includes activities in agriculture (such as crop farming or livestock raising), hunting, forestry, and fishing.

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Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Employment in agriculture: data sources and definitions” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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