Friday, August 19, 2011
Fewer Workers, Longer Hours, Higher Pay Equals 2011 Farm Labor
When farm mechanization arrived in the 1930’s, Mom and Dad did not need to raise as many kids and farm families began to get smaller. And in a few short years, farms began to get larger in size and smaller in number. Neighbors who did not have as much acreage and needed work took on jobs as hired hands and were integral to many family farming operations into the 1980’s. Today’s full time hired labor is rare on a Cornbelt grain farm, but fruit, vegetable, and other horticultural farms will fail without a crew of dependable itinerant laborers. USDA just finished counting the hired workers on US farms, and the totals may not surprise you.
The week of July 10-16 was chosen by USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service as a slice of time in which to tally farm employment. Enumerators found 1,186,000 hired workers, 836,000 of whom had been hired by farm operators and 350,000 who were supplied by agricultural service companies. The total was down 5% from 2010, in part because of the weather. The Northern Plains and the Eastern Cornbelt—two areas which were quite wet with delays in crop planting—saw the greatest decreases in the number of hired workers. With slow field activity, USDA says fewer workers were needed. The largest increases were in the Great Lakes States and the Western Cornbelt, which had a better spring planting season.
If you have hired labor, how many days a year do you employ a full time worker? Farms who utilize additional labor more than 150 days per year dropped from 627,000 last year to 606,000 this year. And farms which employ additional labor less than 150 days dropped from 258,000 last year to 230,000 this year. However, the work week got longer and was expanded to 41.3 hours in 2011 from just 40.7 hours per week a year ago. The average wage climbed from $10.11 per hour last year to $10.25 this year for a combined field and livestock operation. Field worker wages increased from $10.09 last year to $10.24 this year. Livestock workers wages rose from $10.79 to $10.90 for this year. USDA did not include amenities such as housing and meals.
In the Cornbelt states hired workers put in an average of 34.4 hours per week in the eastern Cornbelt and 37.1 hours per week in the western Cornbelt. Workers in the Northern Plains averaged 45.2 hours per week. Cornbelt labor was some of the highest paid at $11.25 per hour in the eastern Cornbelt and $12.15 per hour in the western Cornbelt. The latter was exceeded only in Hawaii at nearly $15 per hour.
Commercial farms which gross more sales will also pay workers more. For Cornbelt farms with gross sales of $50,000 to $99,000, the average wage of $9.57 per hour. That rose to $10.73 at farms which grossed up to $250,000 and rose further to $11.93 on farms which grossed over $1 million in sales. The average was $11.20 per hour. Where do your employees fall on that scale?
Among all hired workers counted in the July 10-16 survey, 13% were on farms with field crops, 58% were on farms with other types of crops, and 29% were on livestock, dairy, and poultry operations. Fifty percent of workers are on farms which gross over $1 million in gross sales, which puts many large horticultural operations in that category. The other 50% of workers were evenly distributed among farms of varying gross sales. Thirty percent of workers were on farms with 51 or more workers, and the other 70% were fairly distributed among farms with lesser numbers of employees, however it is noteworthy that 19% of workers were on farms with 3-6 workers.
Summary:
Adverse spring weather in the Plains and Cornbelt states not only delayed crop production but reduced the need for typical levels of farm labor this year. There was a 5% drop in the number of hired workers hired in the Cornbelt, however, they worked longer hours than last year and also were paid a bit more.
Posted by Stu Ellis on 08/19 at 12:00 AM | Permalink