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Agrifood value chain employment and compensation shift with structural transformation

Nature Food volume 6, pages 868–880 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The traditional structural transformation narrative emphasizes intersectoral labour reallocation out of agriculture, ignoring whether workers exit agrifood value chains or merely migrate within them. Here we decompose multiregional input–output table data into industry- and country-specific annual labour value-added estimates by final consumer market segment, matching them with industry-specific employment data to estimate average worker compensation. Using data covering most of the global economy over 1993–2021, we report ten stylized facts about labour reallocation amid structural transformation. As incomes grow, labour exits primary production while downstream agrifood value chain segments maintain a steady economy-wide employment share—offering jobs that pay better than farm work. Women disproportionately move from primary production to downstream, consumer-facing retail and food service, whereas men migrate to better-paying midstream jobs, increasing gender pay inequality within the value chain. Employment shifts are strongly associated with changes in national per capita income, but not with agricultural total factor productivity growth.

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Fig. 1: Stylized illustration of globally integrated AVCs.
Fig. 2: Value added by national income level.
Fig. 3: Labour share of total AVC value added.
Fig. 4: Total economy-wide employment shares by national income level.
Fig. 5: Average compensation per AVC worker.
Fig. 6: Unpacking AVC employment: subcontracting and gender.

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Data availability

The Eora data used in this study are available at https://worldmrio.com/. Other data, including those from the World Bank, USDA ERS and ILO, are available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/T6ON4W.

Code availability

The code to replicate our results is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/T6ON4W.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Ingram for helpful research assistance, M. Bellemare, L. Christiaensen, B. Dalheimer, S. Dall’Erba, R. Hill, K. Schneider, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor, J. Gil, for helpful comments on an earlier draft, and the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service for funding through the Agri-food Systems Targeted Applied Research (ASTAR) program under cooperative agreement number 58-4000-1-0080. The findings and conclusions in this paper should not be construed to represent any official US Department of Agriculture or US Government determination or policy. All errors are our own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Jing Yi

  2. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Shiyun Jiang & Jeffrey R. Bloem

  3. New York State Legislature, Albany, NY, USA

    Dianna Tran

  4. Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Miguel I. Gόmez, Patrick Canning & Christopher B. Barrett

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  1. Jing Yi
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Contributions

J.Y., M.I.G., P.C., J.R.B. and C.B.B. conceived of the study. J.Y., S.J. and D.T. assembled data and led the data analysis and visualization. J.Y., S.J. and P.C. developed code for analysis. C.B.B. authored the first draft. All authors contributed to the discussion, reviewed the paper, provided critical feedback and contributed to editing the final paper. C.B.B. and P.C. secured resources and supervised the study.

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Correspondence to Christopher B. Barrett.

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Nature Food thanks Andrea Cattaneo, Fabio Gaetano Santeramo and Xin Zhao for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–9 and Tables 1–15.

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Yi, J., Jiang, S., Tran, D. et al. Agrifood value chain employment and compensation shift with structural transformation. Nat Food 6, 868–880 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01225-9

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