Giving Compass' Take:
- Seth Bodine reports that demand for migrant farmworkers increased in 2020 despite high unemployment rates among Americans.
- Why might farmers have sought to higher more foreign workers than usual in the midst of a pandemic? What safety concerns exist on farms as a result of COVID-19?
- Read about how migrant farmworkers have been impacted by the pandemic.
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Despite COVID-19 risks and high unemployment rates last year, employers wanted to fill more jobs filled with H-2A guest workers in 2020.
Usually, high unemployment rates decrease the demand for H-2A workers. Diane Charlton, a professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University, says a 1% increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a 5% decrease in demand for H-2A workers, according to a recent study. She says that trend didn't hold up in 2020.
The U.S. Department of Labor certified the applications of 13,552 farm employers to fill 275,430 jobs with H-2A workers in Fiscal Year 2020, up from 258,000 jobs in 2019.
Read the full article about unemployment and migrant workers by Seth Bodine at Harvest Public Media.