Self-employment week ends not a moment too soon with a look at agricultural self-employment.
Agricultural employment is the U.S. has fallen consistently for decades. For example, in 1948 there were over 7 million American agricultural workers. Today, despite our population and workforce being over 2.5 times larger than in 1948, only about 2.2 million people are classified as agricultural workers.
Automation, productivity increases and food imports have accounted for the long term decline in farm employment.
But as the chart below shows, agricultural self-employment may be bottoming out.
Increased consumer interest in food safety, organic food and buying fresh and local food has led to a growing number of small farms. Related to this, the number of farmers' markets has grown from under 400 in 1970 to over 4500 today.
We've posted extensively on the trends related to the growth of small farms and local food. Based on these trends, our expectation is agricultural self-employment will increase substantially over the ne next decade.