Farm Household Income Preliminary Estimate for 2022 and Forecast for 2023—August 2023 Update

Suggested citation for linking to this discussion:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Farm Household Well-being: Farm Household Income Forecast, August 31, 2023.

Median Income of Farm Operator Households Forecast to Increase Nominally, Decrease After Inflation, in 2023

Median total farm household income is estimated to have increased in 2022 to $95,740 and forecast to increase again to $98,148 in 2023. That is a nominal increase of 3.8 percent (a 3.0-percent decline after inflation) between 2021 and 2022, and a 2.5-percent nominal increase (a 0.9-percent decline after inflation) in 2023.

Farm households typically receive income from farm and off-farm sources. Median farm income earned by farm households is estimated to have decreased in 2022 to -$849 from $210 in 2021 and is forecast to decline further to -$880 in 2023. Many farm households primarily rely on off-farm income: median off-farm income in 2022 is estimated at $81,108, a decrease of 2.1 percent (a decrease of 8.4 percent after inflation) from $82,809 in 2021, and it is forecast to increase by 3.4 percent (a 0.1-percent decline after inflation) to $83,831 in 2023. Since farm and off-farm income are not distributed identically for every farm, median total income will generally not equal the sum of median off-farm and median farm income.

See the Farm Household Income and Characteristics data product tables for financial statistics of farm operator households.