The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service intends to reinstate the Agricultural Labor Survey, suspended on September 30th.
NASS will mail the questionnaires and collect data immediately for the survey period that was originally scheduled for October of 2020.
The report will be published on February 11th and will include data for the July and October 2020 reference dates.
The report will include annual average wage rates, hired workers, and hours worked.
Fruit Growers News says the agricultural farmworkers advocacy group Farmworker Justice issued a press release protesting the original September 30th action by the Trump administration, canceling USDA’s Farm Labor Survey of agricultural employers that’s used by the Department of Labor to set the main minimum wage under the H-2A guestworker program.
After the suspension was challenged in federal court, a preliminary injunction was issued and ordered NASS to reinstate the data collection.
NASS says in the Federal Register that if the court’s order is modified or dissolved in the future, NASS will publish a subsequent notice informing the public of that development as well as NASS’s intentions regarding further information collection.
