The CSO published its quarterly labour force survey this week, showing that there were a record 2.839m people in employment in the Irish economy at the end of June.

The survey also produced detailed breakdowns on how many people are employed in different industries. The number of people employed in agriculture and related trades, a classification which includes farmers, farm managers and horticulture workers, was at 86,300, a slight increase on the previous quarter, but a drop of almost 4,000 when compared to the year earlier. The number is approximately 6,000 lower than the quarterly average over the last 20 years.

When taken as a percentage of the overall number of people employed in the economy, the share working in agriculture and related trades has fallen from almost 5% a decade ago, to just 3% at the end of June this year (see Figure 1). The drop has almost entirely been driven by increased employment across the rest of the Irish economy. The last decade has seen a 40% increase in total employment in Ireland.

Over the same decade, the value of Irish agri food exports has increased by 69% and the volume of agri food exports has increased by 27%. The achievement of this expansion in agricultural production, while employment in the sector has failed to grow at all, can only have been achieved through big increases in efficiency.

In 2015, on average, for every person employed in agriculture and related trades there were 43.6t of agri food exports. By the end of 2025, for every person employed in agriculture and related trades there were 59.9t of agri food exports.

This is an astonishing improvement of 35% in output by volume per unit of labour. While some of the growth was achieved due to the ending of quotas a decade ago, that should in no way take away from the achievement, as expanding output without expanding labour requirements is never an easy task.