The materials of the article are devoted to the urgent problem of increasing rural employment in the conditions of sustainable development of agricultural sector and rural areas of the country. Foreign experience (European countries, the USA) of regulating the employment of the population, ensuring effective public administration of labor activity aimed to increase economically viable and promising jobs, increase investment activity, and solve the problems of productive use of labor by means of institutional reforms is analyzed. A comparative analysis of sectoral structure of employment is given, indicating a decrease in the share of people employed in agricultural production, and the presence of low-skilled labor resources in the industry. The studies show that there is a tendency to reduce the economically active part of the population of rural areas, which is a consequence of the migration of able-bodied people. The main reasons for the outflow of the rural population to the cities are revealed: the lag in the level and quality of life in rural areas compared to the urban one due to cultural and living conditions, the underdeveloped social and engineering infrastructure in the countryside, the low prestige of agricultural labor due to low income, and the unattractiveness of living in rural areas points. It is shown that in the context of digitalization of the country's economy, the relevance of the quality of labor resources from the point of view of the need to ensure the sustainable development of agro-industrial complex and rural areas is increasing.