H-2A wage rates; NASS reports returning

Washington Ag Today December 27, 2011 The U.S. Department of Labor has announced the minimum hourly wage rates that employers must pay H-2A workers in order to ensure that the wages of similarly employed U.S. workers are not adversely affected. The wage rates are calculated using USDA’s annual wage rates from its regional Farm Labor Survey.

In Washington the 2012 hourly rate for H-2A workers will be $10.92 up three percent from this year.

The Labor Department says the rates were published earlier this year in order to provide growers with as much advance notice of changes as possible and to reduce application processing delays.

Recall that USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service was going to cancel several of its reports. That was due to budget reasons. But NASS’s Joe Prusaki ways that when the final 2012 fiscal year budget was approved by Congress;

Prusacki: “NASS came out better than what we had expected.”

Among the reinstated reports are the January sheep inventory, the July cattle inventory, annual reports on farm numbers, land in farms and farm income and in season fruit and vegetable forecasts and estimates. They are back, at least for fiscal 2012.

Prusacki: “2013 is a whole different year, a whole different budget. We can only wait and see what happens.”

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By the way, NASS reports that hop production this year in Washington was down two percent from 2010. Washington hop producers raised 79 percent of the U.S. hop crop in 2011.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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