Farm Employment and Farm Workers The 115,000 U.S. farm establishments registered with unemployment insurance (UI) agencies hire about 2.5 million farm workers some time each year to fill 1.5 million year-round or full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs, including the 80% of FTE jobs covered by UI. (Smaller farms are exempt from UI in some states.) Many farm jobs are seasonal, so it takes two 6-month or three 4- month jobs to create one FTE farm job. California accounts for a third of average or FTE farm employment covered by unemployment insurance (see Figure 1), and California farms employ 850,000 workers some time each year (Hooker et al., 2024).