Agroeconomic and environmental implications of future labor market evolution

Abstract

Long-term labor market evolution shapes agricultural transformation through labor productivity growth and labor market transitions. Despite its importance in agricultural production, labor has been overlooked when exploring the agrifood-water-environment-climate nexus. Here, we incorporate evolving labor markets into multisector dynamic modeling to examine their agroeconomic and environmental implications. Our projections show that the recent decline of global agricultural employment persists, with an estimated decrease of over 40 million people per decade by 2100, strengthening the decoupling of labor from production. Exploring scenarios with varying labor productivity and supply factors, we illustrate a critical linkage between labor market dynamics and global environmental change, with a positive relationship between productivity-adjusted labor supply and agricultural emissions and more pronounced regional and sectoral responses. While highlighting the pressing need to capture labor dynamics in the integrated human-Earth systems, our study lays the foundation for further investigation into labor market responses and feedback in broader scenarios.