Between 2020 and 2025, there will be an estimated total of 59,400 annual job openings in the agricultural job sector. Purdue University doctoral student Joshua Strine authored a study on the average starting salary for agricultural graduates.
The average posted starting salary in those five years reached a high of $63,945 in January 2023. The lowest was $42,247 in February 2023. More recently in the study, the average salary was $53,594 in January 2024. Multiple trends show up in the data. First, there was an increase in posted salaries from 2022 to 2023. The average salary of job openings in 2022 and 2023 were $49,373 and $56,147, respectively. Salaries were also higher in 2021 at $52,051.
One possible explanation is the increased demand for employees as companies transitioned back to full operation after COVID-19. Companies may have had to increase the wages they were offering to recruit more at-home workers back into the office.