Skip to main content
Skip to main content

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

The increase in labor productivity coincided with the U.S. farm sector increasing the intensities of other input per unit of labor

  • by Sun Ling Wang, Robert A. Hoppe and Thomas Hertz
  • 2/17/2022
  • Farm Economy
  • Farm Practices & Management
  • Farm Labor
  • Agricultural Research and Productivity
Line chart indicating input density of five categories: Agricultural chemicals per labor, Purchased services per labor, Feed and seed per labor, Machineries per labor, and Land per labor from 1948 to 2017.

Download chart image

Total U.S. farm output almost tripled from 1948 to 2017, though total labor hours in the farm sector declined more than 80 percent. The quality of agricultural labor, as measured by educational attainment and other labor attributes, increased over this time. Economic Research Service researchers determined that for farm labor, the growth in human capital attributes, such as education, mitigated the negative effects from a decline in farm labor hours worked.

Like this chart?

You may also like Charts of Note.

Check it out