For a considerable time, the agricultural labor force in the United States has been composed of two distinct categories of workers: (1) self-employed farm operators and their families, and (2) hired laborers. Between 1950 and 1990, there was a long-term fall in both types of employment as mechanization increased agricultural output and decreased the need for labor. The employment rate has steady since 1990.
Until 1990, the fall in family and self-employed labor was slower than the decline in paid labor. Data from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) Farm Labor Survey (FLS) show that the number of family and self-employed farmworkers fell by 74% from 7.60 million in 1950 to 2.01 million in 1990.
The average yearly employment of hired farmworkers—including those employed by farm labor contractors and as on-agricultural support staff—fell from 2.33 million to 1.15 million during this same time period, a 51 percent decrease. Consequently, over time, the percentage of hired workers has increased.
Although they make up fewer than 1% of all wage and salary workers in the country, hired farmworkers are vital to the country’s agricultural industry. Wages and salaries plus contract labor expenditures accounted for just 12% of production expenses for all farms, but 43% for greenhouse and nursery operations and 39% for fruit and tree nut operations, according to statistics from the 2017 Census of Agriculture.
Many hired farmworkers are foreign nationals from Mexico and other Central American nations; many do not have the proper documentation to work in the United States. Farmworkers have migrated less frequently to follow the crop season and less frequently to go vast distances for work in recent years. The agricultural workforce is aging as a result of a decline in the number of youthful, recent immigrants employed in agriculture. The pay for hired farmworkers has gradually increased over the last 30 years, both in real terms and in comparison to the average income for a nonsupervisory worker in a nonfarm occupation.