Over fifty percent of the inhabitants of the department are engaged in agricultural activities. It is one of the poorest and most rural departments in France. During the hundred years leading up to 1962, its population declined by around 100,000, while all of the surrounding departments had population growth. Yonne had been bypassed by the development of the railways. As French industry flourished elsewhere in the late nineteenth century, the young people left Yonne seeking better opportunities, and the department stagnated.