The final H2-A rule was announced this week by the Department of Labor. The final rule brings a change to how farm labor rate increases are determined. The American Farm Bureau Federation’s Congressional Relations Director, Allison Crittenden said that the rule doesn’t use USDA’s Farm Labor Survey for employees that would fall under the core farm occupations. “We’re no longer using the survey-based wage methodology that has all those drastic swings from year-to-year of a 23 percent increase in one year, or a ten percent increase in a different region,” Crittenden said. She explained that they’re switching to a two-year freeze and then using the Employment Cost Index which isn’t as unpredictable as the survey-based way of doing things when it comes to the increases that start in 2023.
Crittenden stressed that farmers need some predictability in their lives with this final rule. She said the good thing is that farmers will at least have some level of certainty that the wages won’t be increasing until 2023 for the people that qualify for the core farm occupations. Crittenden brought up how this new rule lets farmers plan for the next year without any giant increases thrown onto them right at the beginning of the year. The Employee Cost Index (ECI) is one with more stability because the increases are 2.24 percent each year over the past ten years. The advantage of this is that it lets farmers predict, plan, figure out what they need for labor, and also keep paying their employees a fair wage.
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