al workers.

Only fragmentary information relating to the farm labor force has been
published in official statistics. Agricultural employment in 1969
constituted 51 percent of total employment, compared with 65.4 percent
in 1960 and 74.1 percent in 1950. Published absolute figures bear only
on employment by the state; in 1969 the state employed 431,200 persons,
including 290,000 on state farms and 93,500 in agricultural
mechanization enterprises. Data published in connection with a
conference held by the Romanian Academy of Social and Political
Sciences, however, implied that total agricultural employment in 1968
amounted to 5.2 million persons, including 4.3 million able-bodied
collective farm members. The proportion of women in the collective farm
labor force was reported to be 57.5 percent in 1966; the proportion was
much larger in highly developed industrial zones. More than 70 percent
of the collective farm workers, but only about 10 to 15 percent of the
workers on state farms, were engaged in crop production.

Not all the collective farm members participate in the work of the
collective. Some are permanently employed in nonagricultural branches of
the economy. Others--as many as 25 percent of all farmers in 1969--work
as day laborers in industry and construction, on state farms, and in
other occupations. Housewives with small children and wives of salaried
farm employees also take no part in the collective work. Members who do
participate generally work only a portion of the year because there is
not sufficient work for them to be fully occupied. In the years 1967 to
1969, these members, on the average, contributed only from 139 to 142
man-days per year. In 1968, for example, 22 percent of all collective
farmers put in not more than forty man-days, and 55 percent of the
farmers worked fewer than 120 days. Many farmers work only the minimum
number of days required to keep their personal plots. There are wide
variations in the degree of labor participation between geographic
regions, between individual farms, and among production sectors of a
single farm. At the beginning of the decade of the 1970s about 40
percent of the income of collective farm families was derived from
nonagricultural pursuits.

Underemployment in agriculture is expected to continue at least
throughout the 1970s. Industry, though growing very rapidly, will not be
able to absorb any significant numbers of farmworkers because of the
government'