Bonnie Johnson
February 09, 2021
Newsletter Article
2020 was a year like none other; perhaps we don’t want to go back, but it surely provided areas of growth and opportunity, particularly for essential industries like agriculture. AgCareers.com annually reviews trends in jobs, candidates, and site activity in our Agribusiness Job Report. This review of trends helps us identify where we’re going and make our way forward.
It’s no surprise that the average unemployment rate experienced staggering increases in 2020. Though the general uneasiness of the markets, the essential nature of the global agricultural industry aids in its stability. There were 43,000-plus job openings posted on AgCareers.com in 2020.
Candidate Trends
Candidates continue actively pursuing careers in agriculture and use AgCareers.com in the job search process. In 2020, over 19,000 candidates set-up new job seeker accounts on AgCareers.com and the number of candidates’ job alerts increased by 70% (job seekers may subscribe for text and email alerts of new jobs meeting their search criteria). Candidates added over 5,500 new resumes to the AgCareers.com database in 2020, up 10% from 2019.
Sixty-five percent of North American applicants had a bachelor’s degree or higher. AgCareers.com draws applicant traffic from a range of majors and occupations both inside and outside of the agricultural industry. The majority of North American applicants had an ag-based degree (59%), with Ag Business remaining the most common. Twelve percent of applicants were students and 55% were currently or most recently employed in ag occupations. Over one-third of applicants had 10-plus years of experience.
Job Trends
Employers posted over 40,000 jobs on AgCareers.com in 2020; job postings peaked in March as the pandemic spread, thereafter, declining for a few months before resurging in October as the market stabilized.
Sales/retail careers continued at the top, followed by farm & ranch operations. Technician careers nearly doubled in the past year. The Plant & Soil Sciences, Seed and Biotechnology industry lead in jobs posted, followed by Chemical, Pesticide and Fertilizer and Equipment, Manufacturing & Technical.
There was a 49% decrease in the internship/summer work experience category in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic’s limits on internship programs. As the industry normalizes in 2021, we expect a resurgence of internship programs as a key developer in the talent pipeline.
AgCareers.com created Agribusiness Job Reports for both the US and Canadian markets. While this article concentrated on worldwide trends, download a copies of the full reports here for more country-specific trends: /reports.cfm.
