occupations) and is often left to the discretion of enumerators and data entry personnel, without clear guidance on how to classify farmers.<sup>3</sup> Under the 19th ICLS standards, the distinction between own-use and market-oriented work in agriculture has been propelled to the forefront of labor statistics in developing countries.

The present paper analyzes the implications of the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards on measures of employment obtained from multi-topic household surveys. We focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, where we expect a disproportionately large decline in measured employment using the revised standards, due to the high prevalence of subsistence agriculture in the region.<sup>4</sup> The main contribution of this paper is as follows: first, we provide a brief history of the evolution of labor statistics standards and the rationale for changing the definition of employment. Second, using multi-topic household survey data sets from three Sub-Saharan African countries, we illustrate how measures of employment of male and female farmers change under the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards, comparing different measurement approaches, and the implications on country-level headline indicators of employment. This complements the extensive qualitative and quantitative work carried out by the ILO in piloting alternative survey questionnaires to support the operationalization of the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards in labor force surveys (Benes and Walsh 2018). Third, the paper contributes to the broader literature on the sensitivity of labor statistics to survey methodology in developing countries (Bardasi et al 2011; Heath et al, forthcoming; Arthi et al 2018; Gaddis et al, forthcoming).

Our main findings are as follows. First, even with a geographical focus on rural Africa, there is large contextual variation in the share of farmers classified as employed under the revised standard, depending on spatial differences in the commercialization of agricultural production. In parts of Malawi and Nigeria 70 to 80 percent of farmers report producing only or mainly for family consumption at the beginning of the agricultural season (i.e. the growing season of the main local crop), which is not considered as employment by the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards but falls under the new category of own-use production work. However, this share is much lower in parts of Ghana, where only 24 percent of farmers produce for own use. Second, we find that, in contexts where gender differences in the self-reported intended use of output are significant, women are less likely than men to report producing only or mainly for sale. Further in-depth analyses using the data collected in Malawi, which are best suited to analyze male-female differences, shows that the

> 3 This mirrors difficulties in the agricultural economics literature in defining and measuring subsistence agriculture – a term which is often used in policy circles, but without any generally accepted definition (Wharton 1969; Brüntrup and Heidhues 2002). 4 The operationalization of the 19th ICLS standards provided an opportunity for enhanced methodological testing. This has led to a redesign of labor force surveys and labor modules in multi-topic household surveys and an ambitious agenda of survey methodological research by the ILO and World Bank under the Women’s Work and Employment Partnership, of which this paper is a product. Due to the co-occurrence of these changes in survey design with the rollout of the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards, some countries may see an increase in employment, especially for females, where traditional surveys often failed to capture certain types of informal employment. This paper is concerned with the rollout of the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards in isolation, i.e. comparing employment ratios under the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS standards with previous (1982) standards for the same household survey.

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