Listen to episode six below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music.
Randy Weinstein is co-founder of a company called ScrambleStaffing. Scramble … as in eggs. It’s a recruitment agency for the poultry industry. Their website says that they’re looking for people who know whether the chicken or the egg came first — if you’ve got the answer, there’s a job waiting for you.
It might sound a little gimmicky, but there really are job opportunities in the egg and poultry industry. Even when so many other parts of the agricultural sector are struggling, Weinstein says there’s money in the chicken coop.
But the industry isn’t for everyone. If you’re expecting a managerial position at a poultry farm to be a cushy, corporate job, you’re in for a bit of a rude awakening.
But we won’t end there — because ScrambleStaffing’s story, and the story of the Midwestern poultry industry, is not as simple as the employment data and revenue trendlines make it out to be. It’s also about succession, about what comes next for the region’s farms, and what agriculture will need to look and feel like to stay relevant to the next generation of farmers.
Learn more about the state of poultry and eggs in the U.S. by exploring the data visuals below.
Employment in poultry and egg production held relatively flat — somewhere between 88,000 and 135,000 jobs until 2018. The steep increase started in 2020, while employment in other areas of agriculture — like crop production and cattle ranching — is decreasing.
Per capita consumption of chicken climbed from under 70 pounds in 1993 to just over 100 pounds in 2024 – a 45% increase in three decades.
Egg consumption per capita also saw a significant increase since 2010. The dip in recent years reflects the price shock caused by avian influenza outbreaks, which brought egg prices to record highs.
The Midwest dominates U.S. egg production. Iowa, Ohio and Indiana alone account for more than a third of all eggs produced in the country, with Iowa’s 13.4 billion eggs placing it ahead of every other state.
