Source:  RURAL MIGRATION NEWS, UC DAVIS, 3/17/20


The average hourly earnings of hired US farm workers are rising faster than the average earnings of US nonfarm production workers. The earnings of all US hired farm workers averaged $15 an hour in 2019, according to USDA’s Agricultural Labor Survey, while nonfarm US workers in the BLS Current Employment Statistics program earned an average of $24 an hour.

There are several reasons why farm earnings are rising faster than nonfarm earnings. First is the slowdown in unauthorized Mexico-US migration. Unauthorized workers pay their own way to the US and arrange for their own housing and rides to work. In 2000, almost a quarter of crop workers were unauthorized newcomers who were in the US less than a year. Today, the share of unauthorized newcomers is almost zero.

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