Our World
in Data
Data

Agricultural value added per worker

What you should know about this indicator

Value added per worker is a measure of labor productivity—value added per unit of input. Value added denotes the net output of a sector after adding up all outputs and subtracting intermediate inputs. Data are in constant 2015 U.S. dollars. Agriculture corresponds to the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) tabulation categories A and B (revision 3) or tabulation category A (revision 4), and includes forestry, hunting, and fishing as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production.

Limitations and exceptions: For comparability of individual sectors labor productivity is estimated according to national accounts conventions. However, there are still significant limitations on the availability of reliable data. Information on consistent series of output is not easily available, especially in low- and middle-income countries, because the definition, coverage, and methodology are not always consistent across countries. For more details, see Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added (constant 2015 US$) [NV.AGR.TOTL.KD], Industry (including construction), value added (constant 2015 US$) [NV.IND.TOTL.KD], and Services, value added (constant 2015 US$) [NV.SRV.TOTL.KD].

Statistical concept and methodology: Value added per worker is calculated by dividing value added of a sector by the number employed in the sector. Gross domestic product (GDP) represents the sum of value added by all producers. Value added is the value of the gross output of producers less the value of intermediate goods and services consumed in production, before accounting for consumption of fixed capital in production. The United Nations System of National Accounts calls for value added to be valued at either basic prices (excluding net taxes on products) or producer prices (including net taxes on products paid by producers but excluding sales or value added taxes). Both valuations exclude transport charges that are invoiced separately by producers. Value added by industry is normally measured at basic prices, while total GDP is measured at purchaser prices. Data on employment are modeled estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO) ILOSTAT database. The concept of employment generally refers to people above a certain age who worked, or who held a job, during a reference period. Employment data include both full-time and part-time workers.

Source
Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 20, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1991–2019

Related research and writing

legacy-wordpress-upload

Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century

Hannah Ritchie

Explore charts that include this data

Agriculture value added per worker vs. GDP per capita

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Retrieved from
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Agricultural value added per worker”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from World Bank based on data from multiple sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per-worker-wdi [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Agricultural value added per worker” [dataset]. World Bank based on data from multiple sources, “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved November 23, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per-worker-wdi