The European Union
Eurostat

EU agriculture lost the equivalent of a further 115,000 full-time workers in 1998, a fall representing -1.7% for EU15 and -1.5% for the euro-zone.

Declines were recorded in 13 Member States, ranging from -1.5% in Italy and Luxembourg to
-4.1% in Germany. Countries with rises were the Netherlands (1.3%) and Spain (1.2%).

These estimates are reported by Eurostat, Statistical Office of the European Communities in Luxembourg.

The report says that, as a result, the share of agricultural employment in total EU employment will “almost certainly have fallen” from the 4.6% of 1997.

Decline slows, hiring rises

While the estimates for 1998 confirm the long-term downward trend, the rate of decline slowed for the fifth year in a row. In 1992 and 1993 it was nearly -5%.

Despite the continuing fall in labour, output rose by an estimated 1.5% in volume, reflecting further labour productivity gains.

Eurostat underlines the 1998 fall encompasses an equivalent loss of some 130,000 family workers but a small rise in non-family labour volume. This “seems to confirm a slow underlying structural shift towards hired labour”.

Developments reflected in today’s report are influenced largely by those in Italy, Spain and France. Together they account for over half of all EU agricultural labour.

Reasons why…

The number of full-time job equivalents in EU15 agriculture fell from 12.4 to 6.7 million between 1979, when Germany comprised 11 Länder, and last year, when it had 16.

Commenting on this “considerable and persistent” fall, Eurostat writes: “On the one hand, the number of farms has declined sharply… leading to the loss of agricultural labour; and technological changes have seen the substitution of manual labour with machinery.

“On the other hand, there might have been relatively brighter economic prospects for the agricultural workforce in other sectors of the economy as personal expectations, environments and requirements have changed.”

Note: The volume of agricultural labour is calculated in units called Annual Work Units (AWU). An AWU refers to the number of hours actually worked in a full-time job within agriculture. In the absence of national provisions specifying the minimum number of hours qualifying a worker as full-time, 1 800 hours per year is to be taken as the minimum figure. For the data use purposes, figures on the volume of work in agriculture are more useful than numbers of persons because of the amount of part-time work in agriculture.

Eurostat Statistics in Focus, Agriculture and Fisheries, no 14/99, “Less and less work in agriculture; fall of 1.7% for EU-15 in 1998”.