Until 2000, agriculture was the mainstay of employment around the world. Since then, the services sector has assumed this mantle and the gap between the two has widened. Although employment growth in agriculture has slowed, the number of workers in this sector reached over one billion in the early 2010s. At the global level, women are more active in the agricultural sector than men - some 38 per cent versus 33 per cent.

According to FAO, over 1 billion people are employed in world agriculture, representing 1 in 3 of all workers; in sub-Saharan Africa over 60 percent of the entire labor force is involved in agriculture. Agriculture still accounts for about 45 per cent of the world's labor force. In developing countries, about 55 per cent of the labor force is in agriculture, with the figure being close to two thirds in many parts of Africa and Asia. The level of employment in agriculture is extremely small in most developed countries, and has been declining steadily for many generations; on the other hand, it has been declining considerably in developing countries as well.

The distribution of economic wealth in the world remains strongly correlated with employment by economic activity. The wealthier economies are those with the largest share of total employment in services, whereas the poorer economies are largely agriculture based.

There is no single correct mix of inputs to the agricultural land, as it is dependent on local climate, land quality, and economic development; appropriate levels and application rates vary by country and over time and depend on the type of crops, the climate and soils, and the production process used.
Agriculture value added per worker (constant 2010 US$)
Agricultural data are collected by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) from official national sources through the questionnaire and are supplemented with information from official secondary data sources. The secondary sources cover official country data from websites of national ministries, national publications and related country data reported by various international organizations.. The FAO tries to impose standard definitions and reporting methods, but complete consistency across countries and over time is not possible. Data on agricultural employment, in particular, should be used with caution. In many countries much agricultural employment is informal and unrecorded, including substantial work performed by women and children. To address some of these concerns, this indicator is heavily footnoted in the database in sources, definition, and coverage.

The ILO reports data by major divisions of the ISIC revision 2, revision 3, or revision 4. Broad classification such as employment by agriculture, industry, and services may obscure fundamental shifts within countries' industrial patterns. A slight majority of countries report economic activity according to the ISIC revision 2 instead of revision 3 or revision 4. The use of one classification or the other should not have a significant impact on the information for the employment sector indicator data.
Agriculture value added per worker is a measure of agricultural productivity. Value added in agriculture measures the output of the agricultural sector (ISIC divisions 1-5) less the value of intermediate inputs. Agriculture comprises value added from forestry, hunting, and fishing as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production. Data are in constant 2010 U.S. dollars.
Agriculture comprises value added from forestry, hunting, and fishing as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production. Data are in constant 2000 U.S. dollars.

Agricultural productivity is measured by value added per unit of input. Agricultural value added includes that from forestry and fishing. Thus interpretations of land productivity should be made with caution. Among the difficulties faced by compilers of national accounts is the extent of unreported economic activity in the informal or secondary economy. In developing countries a large share of agricultural output is either not exchanged (because it is consumed within the household) or not exchanged for money. Agricultural production often must be estimated indirectly, using a combination of methods involving estimates of inputs, yields, and area under cultivation. This approach sometimes leads to crude approximations that can differ from the true values over time and across crops for reasons other than climate conditions or farming techniques.

Data on employment are drawn from labor force surveys, household surveys, official estimates, censuses and administrative records of social insurance schemes, and establishment surveys when no other information is available. The concept of employment generally refers to people above a certain age who worked, or who held a job, during a reference period. Employment data include both full-time and part-time workers.