USDA ends the Agricultural (Farm) Labor Survey, the U.S.'s only survey of agricultural employers

On August 28, 2025, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it will discontinue its data collection program and reports, including the Agricultural Labor Survey, which is commonly referred to as the Farm Labor Survey (FLS). The FLS is a survey of 18,000 farm operators and the results of the survey are published by NASS in its Farm Labor reports semi-annually, in May and November. The report includes quarterly estimates of number of hired workers and average hours worked per worker during each of four reference weeks. In addition, the FLS includes quarterly estimates of average hourly wage rates for field workers, livestock workers, field and livestock workers combined, and all hired workers (including supervisors/managers and other workers).

Impact:

In addition to providing the best available snapshot the U.S. government has on wages and working conditions in agriculture, the FLS data are used to set wages in the H-2A visa program, a program that allows farm employers to hire migrant workers for seasonal jobs in agriculture. The required wage rate for the H-2A program is known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) and is set every year by the U.S. Department of Labor, because the H-2A law requires that the employment of H-2A workers “not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed.” The FLS is the primary tool used by DOL to set adequate regional AEWRs that protect against such adverse impacts. Without the FLS, DOL will not have an adequate understanding of current wages and working conditions on farms, likely leading to wages being set at lower levels than the actual levels in the current farm labor market.

This is not the first time an administration has decided to end the FLS. On September 30, 2020, the first Trump administration decided to suspend the FLS, and on November 5, 2020, published a rule change for the AEWR that would be based on the lack of FLS wage data. The analysis in that rule revealed one example of the economic impact of eliminating the FLS: The new AEWR methodology without the FLS would have resulted in $170.68 million in wages per year being transferred from farmworkers to farm employers; in other words, an annual pay cut of nearly $171 million for farmworkers. The 2020 suspension of the FLS and the November 2, 2020 final rule were ultimately prevented from going into effect by court injunctions, via litigation brought by the United Farm Workers.

The second Trump administration is currently working on proposing a new AEWR methodology which is slated for publication in February 2026. Discontinuing the FLS a few months before proposing the new AEWR rule appears to be nearly the same playbook from the first Trump administration’s attempt at lowering wages for farmworkers. If the second Trump administration manages to successfully end the FLS this time, it is difficult to estimate the ultimate impact on the wages of farmworkers from the combination of ending the FLS and a new AEWR rule, because it will depend on the methodology chosen by Trump’s DOL. But at the very least, given that there are over 100,000 more H-2A workers in 2025 relative to 2020, the pay cut for workers and resulting wage savings for farm employers will undoubtedly be an order of magnitude larger starting in 2026.

https://www.epi.org/policywatch/usda-ends-the-agricultural-farm-labor-survey-the-u-s-s-only-survey-of-agricultural-employers/