September and March on Yates County's farms

Yates County farms reported 1,228 hired workers for the week of September 24–30, 1939. For March 24–30, 1940, the number was 461. The figures sit in the same county row of the 1940 United States Census of Agriculture.

The number of farms reporting hired labor changed too: 639 in the September week and 276 in the March week.

The census was counting a defined kind of work. People had to be at least fourteen years old and have worked the equivalent of at least two days during the specified week. Housework and contract construction were excluded. The table separated workers hired by the month, those hired by the day or week, and other arrangements that included piece work and contract labor.

The difference between the two weeks is clear. What produced it is less clear from this table alone. The row gives no workers' names, lengths of stay, wages, or working conditions. It does not identify the crop or employer behind a job, measure all unpaid family and household work, or explain migration, gender, and longer-term change.

It is also a county count. Yates includes communities and farmland connected to Keuka Lake, but the figures cannot be assigned to a particular lakeshore, town, farm, or household.

The two weeks show why timing matters when describing a farm workforce. A late-September count and a late-March count can look very different. Neither is an annual employment total.

To learn about the people behind the figures, the next sources would be payrolls, farm records, directories, newspapers, surviving census schedules, and oral histories.

About this account

Later agricultural censuses use their own categories, reference periods, farm definitions, and sampling notes. They remain private research sources. They have not been combined with these two weeks to create a public trend line.

Source note

The figures and definitions come from the United States Census of Agriculture, 1940 New York County Table X, printed page 272, Yates County column, lines 14–29. The table compares farm labor for March 24–30, 1940 with September 24–30, 1939 and defines its measured population in the heading above lines 6–29.

Later census editions use their own categories, reference periods, farm universes, and sampling notes. They remain valuable private research sources, but this draft deliberately does not combine them into a public trend line.