Most guest worker programs are employer-led and contractual, meaning that employers request government certification to employ foreign workers who are tied by contract to a particular job. Contracts assure employers that they will have workers, and provide work and wage guarantees for workers.
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The slowdown in unauthorized Mexico-US migration has set off a race in US fields between rising imports, more machines, and foreign guest workers. Trade policy, including NAFTA re-negotiations, and immigration policy, including more enforcement and new or revised guest worker programs, will determine which strategy dominates.
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Two major wage systems are used to pay hired farm workers: hourly wages and piece rates (some livestock and year-round workers are salaried). Most hired farm workers are paid weekly, and their earnings are the higher of the federal, state, or local minimum wage, the hourly wage, or their piece-rate earnings. Piece rate earnings are the product of the rate per unit of work times the number of units, such as $20 a bin for picking apples times five bins in an eight-hour day yielding $100 in daily earnings or $12.50 an hour.
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The EU had 12 million farms in 2010 that employed 25 million workers, including farmers and spouses who work part time on farms. There are 10 million full-time equivalent jobs or annual work units on EU farms, and 2.3 million of these AWUs involve hired workers. Note that there was less than one full-time operator or hired worker per farm.
US agriculture employs an average 1.3 million farm workers, according to reports by farmers when paying Unemployment Insurance (UI) taxes on the wages of their hired workers. Federal law has since 1978 required farms employing 10 or more workers for 20 weeks in a year, or paying $20,000 in wages in a quarter, to register and pay UI taxes on their employees’ wages.
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