The article deals with the phenomenon of increasing employment of farm workers outside their households in Slovenia in the period before the economic reform in 1965. Due to the decentralization and gradual release of market mechanisms in the economy, farmers were given a number of opportunities at the time to combine their incomes. The economic activities of this working population, on the one hand, benefited companies and the national economy as a whole by delaying investments in housing and rising wages, while on the other hand these workers were problematic due to the exhaustion and poorer labour productivity. The attitude of politicians, managers and scientists towards the part time farmers, therefore, was not unequivocal.