Highlights

Employment indicators 2000–2022 (October 2024 update)

New FAOSTAT data release

24/10/2024

The FAOSTAT Employment indicators domain focuses on indicators related to employment in agrifood systems and rural areas. The data provides information on the employment in agrifood systems, status in employment, divisions of agriculture and hours worked of the people employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing and in rural areas by sex and age whenever possible. 

FAOSTAT updates the employment indicators yearly, using data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) database that contains a rich set of indicators from a wide range of topics related to labour statistics. As of September 2024, FAOSTAT disseminates five new indicators on employment in agrifood systems (AFS) for the period 2000–2021 at the country, regional and global levels. These indicators extend FAO's recent efforts to develop a methodology to estimate employment in agrifood systems over the last few years. 

Main findings:

  • Close to 1.3 billion people, or 39.2 percent of the global workforce, were employed in agrifood systems in 2021.
  • About 70 percent of agrifood system employment in Africa and Asia is in agriculture, while in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania, this proportion is around 40 percent.
  • Non-agricultural agrifood system employment remained stable globally at around 13 percent between 2000 and 2021.
  • The agricultural sector employed 892 million people worldwide in 2022, which corresponds to 26.2 percent of total employment. Women constituted 28.5 per cent of the global agricultural workforce.
  • The share of employment in agriculture in 2022 was highest in Africa (48 percent) and lowest in Europe (5 percent).
  • In most countries, the share of men and women working in agriculture as employees remained low, and below 10 percent in 2022.
  • Overall, people aged 25 to 54 years make most of the labour force in rural areas. In addition, a significant gender disparity persists, with fewer women than men in employment or looking for a job.
  • In 2022, women in agriculture worked on average 37 hours per week, compared to 41.7 hours per week for men.