USDA to gather data about farm labor

United States Department of Agriculture NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS SERVICE Delta Regional Field Office (serving Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) 10800 Financial Centre Parkway, Suite 110, Little Rock, AR 72211

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – October 1, 2022 Contact: Kathy Broussard (225) 922-1362

Baton Rouge, Louisiana  – USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will conduct its biannual Agricultural Labor Survey in October. The survey will collect information about hired labor from more than 300 Louisiana farmers and ranchers. NASS will publish the data on Nov. 23 in the Farm Labor report available on the NASS website. Survey recipients who do not respond by Oct. 19 may be contacted by NASS to arrange an interview or sent a reminder email.

In the survey, NASS asks producers to answer a variety of questions about hired farm labor on their operations, including the total number of hired farm workers, total hours worked, and total wages paid for the weeks of July 10-16 and Oct. 9-15, 2022. Survey recipients can respond online at agcounts.usda.gov through NASS’s new respondent portal or by mail. On the portal, producers can complete their surveys, access data visualizations and reports of interest, link to other USDA agencies, and more.

“Agricultural labor data are critical in helping producers when hiring workers and estimating expenses,” said Kathy Broussard, NASS’s Louisiana State Statistician. “The data that farm operators provide through NASS’s Agricultural Labor Survey also allow federal policymakers to base farm labor policies on accurate information.”

USDA and the U.S. Department of Labor use the survey data to estimate the demand for and availability of seasonal agricultural workers, establish minimum wage rates for agricultural workers and administer farm labor recruitment and placement service programs.

“By asking about two separate time periods each time we collect these data during the year, we are able to publish biannual data and capture seasonal variation,” said Broussard. “This approach reduces the number of times we survey farms while ensuring that accurate and timely data are available.”

Participants are encouraged to visit youtu.be/6oWSOjGTQzU for further information on and assistance completing this survey. All previous Farm Labor publications are available on the NASS website at www.nass.usda.gov. For more information on NASS surveys and reports, call the NASS Delta Regional Field Office at (800) 327-2970.

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NASS is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about U.S. agriculture and is committed to providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.

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