Almost 50,000 less workers in Aussie ag amid five-year decline

Agricultural workforce numbers have continued to steadily decline, dropping by 15 per cent since 2020.

More needs to be done to advertise agriculture as a lucrative career to the younger generation, industry says, as ag workforce numbers continue their steady decline.

The number of people working in agriculture has dropped from 308,000 to 259,000 over the past five years, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

In that same period, the number of males employed in agriculture has dropped 13 per cent, and the number of females has dropped 21 per cent.

However, the total number of people in agriculture did experience a rise to almost 259,000 in the May quarter, compared to 245,000 in the previous quarter.

Drover Ag managing director John Boote. Picture: Leeroy Todd

Drover Ag managing director John Boote said the industry still hadn’t recovered from the hit that was Covid-19, with numerous floods, droughts and the commodity price correction all contributing to the decline.

“What we’ve seen in the last four or five years is that young people that used to head north and do a 12-month gap year in agriculture, they’re instead choosing to be a “stop-go” person down in Victoria and getting $50-60 an hour, rather than going up on to a property and earning half of that and working twice as hard,” he said.

With the price of business in agriculture increasing, employers are also looking to hire fewer, better quality workers, which also is contributing to the decline.

But Mr Boote said businesses can only become so efficient before the pool of quality candidates runs dry.

“We’re only dealing with one or two potential, or maybe three amazing candidates per job, where once upon a time we used to double or triple that number,” he said.

Mr Boote said across farming groups, and through the use of social media and the like, it needed to be explained that the industry could be a lucrative career option for the younger generation.

“We align with a lot of schools and universities across the country, but at any of these state or private schools, agriculture is not represented,” he said.

“The army, medical, nurses, ambulance are all there. Agriculture is never there, it’s never present.”

The figures come weeks after the Fair Work Ombudsman found labour hire companies in Victoria had the highest rates of noncompliance in the country.