Wages of hired farmworkers growing, but still behind nonfarm workers

Inflation-adjusted wages for nonsupervisory crop and livestock workers rose at an average annual rate of 1.1 percent a year from 1990 to 2023, according to data from the USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Farm Labor Survey. In 2023, the average wage for nonsupervisory farm workers was $17.55 per hour, 61 percent of the $28.93 paid to their nonfarm counterparts. In 1990, the average nonsupervisory farm worker wage was 51 percent of the average nonsupervisory nonfarm worker wage, indicating a narrowing of the gap between farm and nonfarm wages. From 2019 to 2023, farm wages (adjusted for inflation) grew at a rate of 2.1 percent a year, almost twice the rate seen in the three decades from 1990 to 2023. Such a rapid increase is consistent with recent producer surveys showing that workers were harder than usual to find. This chart appears on the USDA, Economic Research Service’s Farm Labor topic page.