Source: UC DAVIS RURAL MIGRATION NEWS, 3/19/21

Between 1989 and 2019, the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory US farm workers rose by 40 percent, twice as fast as the inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings of nonfarm production workers. Farm worker earnings data are collected by USDA’s Farm Labor Survey, and nonfarm production worker earnings by the BLS Current Employment Statistics program.

Real farm worker earnings rose almost twice as fast as nonfarm earnings in the 1990s, slightly faster in the 2000s, and almost three times faster between 2010 and 2019. Farm worker earnings have traditionally been 50 percent of nonfarm earnings, but their faster growth in recent years raised average farm earnings to 60 percent of average nonfarm earnings in 2019.

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