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Agriculture

National Career Cluster · the map of work

Agriculture is one of the 14 national career clusters — the U.S. Department of Education's map that divides the whole world of work into broad families, each crosswalked to occupations, education programs, and industries. This cluster spans 46 occupations across 7 sub-clusters, employing about 2,249,700 workers, with a median wage of $50,990.

What's in this cluster

A career cluster is a navigational grouping, not a measured score. The counts below come from the framework's official crosswalk; employment and pay are aggregated from BLS OEWS (national, cross-industry, May 2024) across the occupations in the cluster.

46 occupations
7 sub-clusters
2,249,700 workers (BLS)
$50,990 median pay
173 education programs

Across occupations with wage data, the middle range (25th–75th percentile of occupation medians) runs $42,580 – $79,120. This describes the cluster, not any one job or person.

Sub-clusters

The framework splits each cluster into sub-clusters — tighter families of related work. The count is the number of occupations the crosswalk places in each.

Sub-cluster Occupations
Plant Systems 19
Animal Systems 13
Food Science & Processing 11
Water Systems 8
Agricultural Technology & Automation 6
Agribusiness 3
water systems 1

Largest occupations in this cluster

Exposure quadrant: AI task-overlap percentile vs Median pay AI task-overlap (horizontal) versus median pay (vertical), each as a percentile across all scored occupations, for 38 occupations in Agriculture. Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation. Lower overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · lower pay Lower overlap · lower pay Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products Fallers Slaughterers and Meat Packers Agricultural Equipment Operators Logging Equipment Operators Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers Veterinary Technologists and Technicians First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers Foresters Animal Caretakers Veterinarians Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians Hydrologists Engineers, All Other Architectural and Engineering Managers AI task-overlap percentile → ↑ Median pay
The largest occupations in this cluster with both an AI task-overlap score and a wage, plotted by task-overlap percentile (horizontal) and median-pay percentile (vertical). Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation.

Occupations in this cluster with the most workers nationally (BLS OEWS, May 2024), each linked to its full profile. Employment and pay describe the occupation, not an individual.

Occupation Workers Median pay
Animal Caretakers 277,300 $33,470
Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse 261,690 $35,690
Architectural and Engineering Managers 210,340 $167,740
Engineers, All Other 150,750 $117,750
Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers 141,090 $37,700
Butchers and Meat Cutters 140,040 $38,960
Veterinary Technologists and Technicians 131,320 $45,980
Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers 114,190 $37,320
Pest Control Workers 96,110 $44,730
Veterinarians 80,630 $125,510
Slaughterers and Meat Packers 67,500 $39,790
Biological Scientists, All Other 59,710 $93,330
Food Processing Workers, All Other 57,920 $38,420
Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians 36,880 $52,080
Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals 35,420 $36,150
Forest and Conservation Technicians 31,080 $54,310
Agricultural Equipment Operators 30,940 $42,580
First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers 29,530 $59,330
Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products 26,870 $35,430
Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation 25,200 $45,200
Logging Equipment Operators 22,520 $49,210
Chemical Engineers 20,330 $121,860
Animal Trainers 20,110 $38,750
Microbiologists 19,760 $87,330
Soil and Plant Scientists 16,600 $71,410
Economists 15,880 $115,440
Food Scientists and Technologists 14,370 $85,310
Agricultural Technicians 14,340 $46,790
Food Science Technicians 14,200 $49,430
Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians 12,500 $58,890
Agricultural Inspectors 12,090 $50,990
Animal Control Workers 11,790 $45,830
Foresters 9,650 $70,660
Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers 5,910 $87,980
Hydrologists 5,720 $92,060
Forest and Conservation Workers 5,630 $43,680
Agricultural Workers, All Other 4,980 $40,390
Fallers 4,110 $53,900
Log Graders and Scalers 3,310 $46,710
Hydrologic Technicians 2,940 $58,570

AI exposure across this cluster

Two published studies estimate how exposed each occupation is to today's AI. The OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" study rates the share of an occupation's tasks a large language model (with tools) could speed up by half or more; averaged across this cluster it is 25% — 25th percentile of the 14 clusters. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages -0.31 here.

Computed across the 43 of 46 occupations in this cluster that carry a published exposure score.

Exposure measures where AI could assist tasks — it is not a prediction that these jobs will be automated. High exposure most often means augmentation (faster work), and many high-exposure occupations are also projected to grow.

Where the work sits

The framework anchors each cluster to one or more NAICS industry sectors — the parts of the economy where this work concentrates.

Education programs that lead here

A sample of the 173 CIP 2020 instructional programs the framework crosswalks to this cluster — the fields of study that prepare people for this work.

  • Agribusiness/Agricultural Business Operations
  • Agricultural Animal Breeding
  • Agricultural Business and Management, General
  • Agricultural Business and Management, Other
  • Agricultural Economics
  • Agricultural Engineering
  • Agricultural Mechanics and Equipment/Machine Technology/Technician
  • Agricultural Mechanization, General
  • Agricultural Mechanization, Other
  • Agricultural Power Machinery Operation
  • Agricultural Production Operations, General
  • Agricultural Production Operations, Other
  • Agricultural and Food Products Processing
  • Agricultural and Horticultural Plant Breeding
  • Agriculture, General
  • Agriculture/Veterinary Preparatory Programs, Other
  • Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture
  • Agronomy and Crop Science
  • Anatomy
  • Animal Genetics
  • Animal Health
  • Animal Nutrition
  • Animal Physiology
  • Animal Sciences, General

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 3, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Agriculture." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/clusters/agriculture

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Agriculture. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/clusters/agriculture

BibTeX
@misc{singulariki-agriculture,
  title  = {Agriculture},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/clusters/agriculture}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.