R48614 — Rising Agricultural Wages: Context for Congressional Interest in the H-2A Visa Program

In recent years, wages for hired workers in agriculture have been rising faster than the general rate of wage increases in the United States. This could be a concern for Congress because rising agricultural wages increase costs for farmers and ranchers, affecting food prices, demand for imported food, demand for foreign workers in the U.S. agricultural sector, and demand for investments in the mechanization of farmwork. Many features of the current agricultural labor market were established by previous legislation. Among these features is the H-2A nonimmigrant agricultural worker visa program, which allows U.S. agricultural employers legally to hire foreign workers for temporary or seasonal work. This program has existed largely in its current form since legislation was enacted in 1986. There is currently no cap on the number of foreign agricultural workers who can be hired through the H-2A visa program, and an increasing portion of the agricultural workforce is now made up of H-2A workers. There are multiple proposals in the 119th Congress intended to slow the growth in agricultural wages. These proposals generally focus on changing the wage requirements of the H-2A program. However, new legislation will only be effective in reducing agricultural wage growth if it addresses the actual causes of this growth, and the underlying causes of agricultural wage growth are broader than the wage requirements of the H-2A program. There are three broad theories regarding why agricultural wages are increasing. This report examines these theories and the evidence supporting each one. The theories are not mutually exclusive; there is some explanatory power in all of them, and a full understanding of how policy changes are likely to affect agricultural labor requires understanding all three theories. The first of the theories is that wages are rising because the supply of farmworkers—in particular, the supply of working-age Mexican-born farmworkers in the United States, with and without work authorization—is declining. There is a great deal of evidence to support this theory. Some of this evidence involves root causes within Mexico that affect the number of Mexican-born people interested in farm work (such as falling birth rates, rising education levels, and greater work opportunities in Mexico); other evidence involves U.S. immigration and border enforcement policies that affect the number of Mexican-born farmworkers in the United States. A second theory is that agricultural wages are rising because wages for similar workers in the United States are also rising. In the U.S. economy as a whole, wages for low-paying jobs have been rising more quickly than wages for average- or higher-paying jobs for the past decade. Agricultural work has traditionally been a relatively low-paying job. Researchers studying this pattern of wage changes have attributed the increases in wages for low-wage jobs to state and local minimum wage increases as well as to increased job mobility for low-wage workers during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic shocks. A third theory is that agricultural wages are rising because of the wage requirements of the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program. The H-2A visa program requires that prospective H-2A employers advertise and engage in positive recruitment of U.S. workers for the H-2A job opportunity and offer U.S. workers terms and working conditions no less favorable than those offered to H-2A workers. It also requires these employers to offer wages at or above wage levels specified in regulations that are intended to prevent adverse effects on the wages of similarly employed U.S. workers, and to provide housing and other benefits to workers in these positions. The number of H-2A visas issued has grown in recent years. Some farmer advocates attribute increases in farm labor costs to the wage requirements of the H-2A visa program. There is evidence that wage increases in the H-2A visa program partially spill over into wage increases for U.S. agricultural workers. However, the impact of the H-2A visa program on overall labor costs in the agricultural sector should be understood in the broader context of other factors that also affect agricultural wages and lead farmers to increasingly rely on the H-2A program for farm labor.

Curated by CRS — every bill listed in this report's relatedMaterials. Edge type cited_in_report, gold confidence.

• HR 3227 — Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2025 · 119th Cong
• HR 1624 — Supporting Farm Operations Act of 2025 · 119th Cong
• HR 4319 — Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2023 · 118th Cong
• S 4069 — Affordable and Secure Food Act of 2024 · 118th Cong