Just to start off with, I'm not an expert; what I know is from my undergraduate days taking way too many economics classes. If someone is more knowledgeable fee

Just to start off with, I'm not an expert; what I know is from my undergraduate days taking way too many economics classes. If someone is more knowledgeable feel free to call me out. You're not losing much by skipping farm workers; as I noted above farm payroll changes seasonally, so skipping farm payrolls just helps to smooth the data - I suppose you could also consider it as another way to seasonally-adjust employment figure, although that is stretching the term quite a bit. In addition farm hands for picking/planting are poorly paid and tend to have vague residency status (not making a political point, just economic reality) and so including that data does not change related figures such as GDP too much. It wouldn't surprise me if politics encourages the reporting of non-farm data due to the issue I mentioned above of vague residency status; see the current DACA fight for how contentious discussions like this can get. TLDR the numbers work out better and nobody of importance cares about the difference