Unpredictable rainfall is a major source of income risk for Tanzanian households, who rely heavily
on rain-fed agriculture. This paper examines if households use labor strategies to manage this
risk by analyzing a nationally-representative survey conducted in two waves in conjunction with
rainfall data collected by weather satellites. I examine the ex-ante and ex-post responses of
household labor strategies to historical rainfall variability and rainfall shocks in the survey year.
The findings indicate that households facing negative rainfall shocks are more likely to engage in
self-employment or diversify within agriculture, while the role of historical volatility of rainfall
is not completely clear from the analysis undertaken in this paper.