Source: RURAL MIGRATION NEWS, UC DAVIS, 6/24/20


The average employment of hired workers in US agriculture is about 1.5 million, and there are 2.5 million individuals employed for wages on US farms sometime during a typical year. Farm employment is concentrated in three interrelated ways: by geography, commodity, and size of farm. The 10,000 largest fruit and berry, vegetable and melon, and horticultural specialty (FVH) farms in CA, WA, FL, and TX account for over half of US farm employment, including a third in CA.

Some two million workers, 80 percent of all farm workers, are employed on crop farms. The NAWS finds that 70 percent of crop workers are Mexican-born men settled in one place with US-born children. About 70 percent of the farm workers born in Mexico are unauthorized, making half of all farm workers unauthorized (0.7 x 0.7 = 0.49). The share of unauthorized among all farm workers is lower, perhaps only a third, if H-2A crop workers and workers employed in animal agriculture were included in the NAWS.

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