Forestry often faces negative attention, with logging being an easy scapegoat. However, it’s worth considering how significant the forestry industry is globally.
The World of Forestry-According to the latest global estimate from FAO, the ILO and the Thünen Institute, about 42 million people worldwide worked in the forest sector in 2022. That is roughly 1.2% of all global employment.
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That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
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Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
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It is not possible to eliminate chain shot, but there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
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Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
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Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.
FIND US ON
The 42 million figure includes forestry and logging plus sawmilling/wood products and pulp & paper. So it is considerably larger than the number of people actually working in forests, harvesting timber, planting trees, managing forests, etc.
The previous major estimate was 33 million people for 2017–2019, so the methodology has now been substantially updated.
Global forestry employment — 2022
The forest sector employed at least 42 million people worldwide in 2022 across 182 countries, representing about 1.2% of global employment
The important point is that 42 million is not 42 million forest workers. It includes three broad areas:
Sector
🌲 Forestry & logging is 26%
🪵 Wood & wood-product manufacturing is 58%
📄 Pulp & paper is 16%
Total is 42 million+
So, very roughly, 11 million people globally are employed in forestry and logging itself. The exact figure from the FEM model is slightly below/around that level depending on rounding.
Where are they?
Asia dominates global forestry employment. China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam are the major contributors, and Asia accounts for around half of all forest-sector employment.
A useful regional picture is:
* Asia: ~50% of global forest-sector employment
* Africa: substantial workforce, with forestry particularly important in rural economies
* Europe: much smaller workforce but highly mechanised and productive
* Americas: relatively small employment share compared with the size of the forest resource
* Oceania: comparatively small workforce
This is particularly interesting when comparing countries such as Sweden, Finland, Germany, Canada, USA and the UK. A country can have a huge forest industry without employing huge numbers of people because mechanisation and productivity differ greatly.
One really interesting statistic
Women accounted for about 10.6 million—roughly 25%—of global forest-sector employment in 2022.
Employment in the global forest sector fell about 3.1% between 2011 and 2022, even though the updated methodology estimates around 42 million jobs in 2022.
Timber harvesting
The new FAO/ILO/Thünen study puts forestry and logging at about 10.75 million jobs globally in 2022, that is about 26% of the 41.98 million total forest-sector jobs.
Global forestry & logging workforce — 2022
Forestry & logging jobs
Asia 6.47 million
Africa 1.80 million
Europe 1.34 million
Americas 1.09 million
Oceania 42,000
🌍 World 10.75 million
Asia alone employs about 60% of the world’s forestry and logging workforce. China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam are identified as the major contributors.
Europe, by comparison, has about 1.34 million people in forestry and logging.
That makes the UK particularly interesting because its forestry workforce is tiny by global standards, despite the UK’s sizeable commercial forestry industry.
But there’s a catch
These figures do not mean 10.75 million professional chainsaw operators, forwarder drivers, harvester operators and forestry contractors.
The FAO definition covers the economic category “forestry and logging”, and includes a much wider range of employment. The study also counts someone’s main job, so it excludes people whose forestry work is a secondary occupation.
The researchers also caution that the figures contain uncertainty because many countries have incomplete employment data and substantial informal employment.
The most useful next comparison would be:
UK vs Sweden vs Finland vs Germany vs Norway vs Canada vs USA vs China vs Brazil
showing:
1. Forestry & logging employees
2. Forest area
3. Annual timber harvest
4. Employees per million m³ harvested
5. Timber harvest per forestry worker
That would reveal something quite striking about how highly mechanised UK/Scandinavian forestry is compared with countries such as India and China—and would put the current UK shortage of forestry workers and contractors into a global context.
Country
Forest industry position
Annual industrial roundwood
China Huge forest-product workforce. Huge workforce, but much is not highly mechanised harvesting
USA One of the world’s largest timber producers @400m m³ . Very high mechanisation/productivity
Brazil Major plantation & native-forest industry @250m m³. Large workforce + extremely productive plantations
Canada Major commercial forestry nation @150m m³. Highly mechanised harvesting
Russia Huge forest resource 200m+ m³. Vast resource, but very different operating conditions
Sweden Small population, major timber exporter @75m m³. Very high mechanisation
Finland Major forest industry @70m m³. Very high mechanisation
Germany Europe’s major forest economy @70m m³. High mechanisation, fragmented ownership
Norway Smaller forest industry @15m m³. Highly mechanised
UK Relatively small domestic timber industry@11m m³. Highly mechanised workforce
Sweden and Finland have:
* relatively small populations
* substantial forest resources
* highly mechanised harvesting
* sophisticated harvester/forwarder systems
* high timber output per worker
* strong domestic machinery industries
Yet their machines and operating systems have evolved around high-volume, purpose-built mechanised harvesting.
The UK has adopted much of that technology, but operates in a very different environment — smaller/fragmented forests, steep ground, soft soils, narrow infrastructure and relatively small harvesting sites.
That helps explain whether modern UK machines are becoming too large/heavy for some UK forests. Mechanisation can dramatically increase output per worker.
Approximate timber production per forestry/logging worker
Using around 20,000 people in UK forestry and logging and roughly 11–12 million m³ of roundwood, the UK comes out at approximately:
550–600 m³ of roundwood per forestry/logging worker per year.
The UK figure of around 20,000 forestry-and-logging workers is supported by BRES data for 2021; Forest Research previously reported about 18,000 direct forestry jobs in 2019.
But this doesn’t mean UK harvesting machinery is unproductive, it is quite the opposite.
A large proportion of those 20,000 people are involved in activities such as:
* forest management
* establishment and planting
* silviculture
* roads and infrastructure
* surveying
* management
* conservation
* harvesting
* haulage
* contracting and support work
Only a fraction are actually sitting in harvesters, forwarders, excavators, skidders and other extraction machinery.
Finland is fascinating
Finland is a particularly interesting benchmark.
It has around 64 million m³ of roundwood production, yet only around 23,000 people are recorded in forestry and logging in the relevant statistics.
That gives roughly 2,800 m³ per worker.
Finland also has exceptionally high labour productivity in the forestry and logging sector: Eurostat reports about €203,800 of GVA per person employed in 2022, the highest in the EU.
Europe’s harvesting system is already highly mechanised. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work notes that fully mechanised harvester-forwarder cut-to-length harvesting accounts for roughly 60% of timber harvested in Europe.
So the future isn’t necessarily about putting more people into forestry.
It is increasingly about getting more timber harvested per person.
That creates an interesting paradox for the UK:
The UK has a relatively small forestry workforce, but also relatively low timber production per person compared with the Nordic countries and North America.
And that raises a question directly relevant to the current UK contractor crisis:
Are UK contractors being forced to buy increasingly large and expensive machines to compensate for a shortage of skilled operators and rising costs — even though the UK’s relatively small and fragmented harvesting sites don’t always allow those machines to achieve their theoretical productivity?
Thats a question for another day
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