[sharkmerry]

> The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm workforce of 145 million, per the BLS.

>According to the most recent US employment report, there are 145.8 million nonfarm payroll workers out of a total population of 332 million.

ignoring the mismatching "Populations". (261 million seems to be "Civilian noninstitutional population")

This [0] seems to say there are 152,283,000 employed in US.

are there really ~6.4 million people working on farms in US? i thought farm work was <1% of employed peoples.

[runnerup]

Probably has to do with precise definitions of "non farm", "farmer", "farming" and "agricultural".

BLS has this showing 2.3 million people working in agriculture: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat15.htm

And this showing there are 900,000 jobs for "Agricultural worker" https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/mobile/...

Clearly the terms "Employed persons in agriculture industries" and "agricultural workers" have definitions that diverge much, much more than I would have thought as a layperson.

[meepmorp]

If you expand the "What Agricultural Workers Do" section, it says:

> Agricultural workers maintain crops and tend livestock. They perform physical labor and operate machinery under the supervision of farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers.

According to https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/farmers-ranchers-and-othe..., there are 952,000 jobs as "agricultural managers," which isn't how I'd naively expect things to be divided, but it does make sense.

I wonder how the remaining jobs are categorized.

[munk-a]

If agricultural workers are people working under the guidance of other folks then managers may also include the "self-managed" i.e. any independent farmers including those that rely heavily on automation. There's also probably a fair chance that subcontracting can mess this up with multiple farm hands hired onto a farm all counting as agricultural managers.

It feels like agricultural worker is actually quite narrowly defined to only be unskilled people specifically requiring oversight and management.

[MattGaiser]

With automation, they may not manage anybody anymore, just machinery.

[meepmorp]

Eventually, we'll need philosophers to sort it all out.

[mirkules]

Luckily, there is no shortage of philosophers, especially on the internet.

[burkaman]

Nonfarm also excludes military workers and non-profit employees, and a couple other categories.

[bluedino]

There are 328 million according to the Census

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219