Farm employment begins to increase this time of year in Iowa. Workforce analyst Ann Wagner says the jobs aren’t calculated separately from the rest of Iowa’s work statistics, but some patterns are clear. Nationally, and in Iowa, she says farm employment has been in “a long decline,” because all the technology being used on farms today doesn’t require as many people as the work did 20 or 30 years ago. Iowa’s overall jobless rate this month remained at five-point-one percent, unchanged for three months now.
