USDA conducts a farm labor wage survey twice per year to capture a high-level snapshot of how farm wages are changing. The survey does not go into detail about farm or job types, not does it provide information about compensation benefits other than wages. Combined wages for field and livestock farm employees in New York and New England states in October 2023 was $18.41; wages for the same group in 2022 was $16.92, in 2021 it was $15.85. This represents a 16% increase in hourly farm employee wages in just two years.
Cornell’s PRO-DAIRY program leads a long-running study of the performance of dairy farms in New York state. The project collects data annually from many farms that participate year after year, this gives researchers insight into certain trends over time on the same farms. Jason Karszes recently updated hired labor trends in his publication titled: “Hired labor on New York State dairy farms: Cost, efficiency, and change from 2016 – 2022.” Not surprisingly, labor costs for dairy farms continued to climb, with annual percentage increases of 5.1% in 2021 and 8.7% in 2022. Increasing labor costs were partially offset by increasing labor efficiency, with the amount of milk sold per worker, and the number of cows per worker also rising each year.
Farm managers are severely challenged to keep labor costs under control as outside forces such as rising minimum wage, increasing overtime requirements, and tight labor markets tend to drive up costs. But it’s not just about cost control, managers must organize, train, and lead a highly effective and engaged workforce to be sure that production results increase to continue offsetting labor costs. Employee compensation is a critical part of attracting and retaining high-performing employees. Managers need accurate and detailed data to compare how they are doing relative to others in the industry.
Cornell Ag Workforce Development will run the 2024 Farm Employee Compensation Benchmark in March and April 2024. All farm participants who enter valid, usable data about one or more of their farm’s employees will receive a report and an invitation to participate in a follow up webinar to discuss the findings.
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By Richard Stup, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.
The post Farm Compensation Trends and Benchmark Opportunity appeared in The Ag Workforce Journal.
