Wages are up down on the farm! New stats from USDA show hired hands in the Northern Plains Region (ND, SD, NE, KS) made 7% more during the second week of October than they did in the same week at the top of the 2017 harvest season:
Farm operators paid their hired workers an average wage of $15.49 per hour during the October 2018 reference week, up 7 percent from the October 2017 reference week. Field workers received an average of $15.93 per hour, up $1.00. Livestock workers earned $13.55 per hour compared with $12.76 a year earlier. The field and livestock worker combined wage rate, at $14.80, was up 80 cents from the October 2017 reference week. Hired laborers worked an average of 47.4 hours during the October 2018 reference week, compared with 45.8 hours worked during the October 2017 reference week [USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Lincoln office, press release, 2018.11.16].
Our area farm hands were putting in 14% more hours than the national average. Farm hands nationwide put in 41.5 hours per week, down six minutes from October 2017. The national average hired farm worker wage rose 8%, from $13.42 last year to $14.47 this October.
So there’s one area where South Dakota workers (or at least the cohort in the region to which we belong) are making more money than the national average.
Decrease immigration = tighter agricultural margins. White farm hands that are inclined to work that hard for that kind of money are increasingly harder to find = supply and demand = higher pay = farmers losing $$.
Some recent articles written on the subject: (news sources sometimes seen as left-leaning were intentionally omitted)
https://www.agweb.com/article/losing-immigrant-workers-on-dairy-farms-would-nearly-double-retail-milk-prices-naa-news-release/
https://www.hcn.org/articles/opinion-farmers-should-stand-up-for-the-undocumented-immigrants-they-depend-on
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2018/0326/Worried-by-talks-of-deportation-farmers-defend-immigrant-workforce
https://www.agupdate.com/tristateneighbor/news/ag-leaders-south-dakota-ag-depends-on-immigrant-labor/article_030d8d84-db73-11e7-b386-2bbbc8803772.html
It’s weird to me that livestock workers are paid Less than field hands. Having done plenty of both, I think livestock work is harder, definitely riskier, with greater variation in hours, and dirtier. (You’re going to get sh*t on, guaranteed.) The pay should be reversed.
It’s nice to see South Dakotans get paid BETTER! Yay for SD!!!
Sending immigrant workers back takes about 3 billion out of Medicare and SS funds. That is approximately what immigrants pay in and yet, they can’t collect on it.
Wingnuts of course, know this, but they are trying to starve the government of tax revenues so they can kill all social welfare programs. This is not really any kind of subterfuge n wingnuts part. They have been open and honest in their deviousness.
“Wingnuts of course, know this, but they are trying to starve the government of tax revenues”
Nah. Maybe for a handful of the string-pulling power-brokers. I think your average anti-immigrant Republican is simply motivated by misplaced xenophobia, with varying shades of naked racism, stoked by conspiracy theories and propaganda. Fear and hate are motivating, unfortunately.
I believe all wingnuts signed the no new taxes pledge from Grover Norquist so the government had no choice but cut programs or grow debt and deficits.
TAG, I think it’s both. It’s a righty politician’s mantra that “Government is the problem” and GOP hatred of Soc Sec and Medicare goes back to the day each was founded. Lastly, in their minds, all taxes are evil. It’s been a wingnut wet dream to end both programs for decades.
The average righty citizen likes the social programs as much as anyone else, but they’ve totally bought into the taxes and government bill of baloney. The average righty citizen is not known for a high level of critical thinking but does have an extremely advanced level of denial. That’s how they can vote for destroying revenue without realizing what that will do to the programs they want.
And they think immigrants are frightening and dangerous. That’s despite the fact that they are descendants of immigrants and that the most dangerous terrorists in the USA today are white males.
It’s a perfect storm of US destruction that really determined patriots are in the process of overcoming.
Speaking of a perfect storm of economic destruction from the New York Times 11/17/2018
“The $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law late last year has already given the American economy a jolt, at least temporarily. It has fattened the paychecks of most American workers, padded the profits of large corporations and sped economic growth.
Those results weren’t a surprise. Economists across the ideological spectrum predicted the new law would fuel consumer spending, in classic fashion: When the government borrows money and dumps it into the economy, growth tends to accelerate. But Republicans did not sell the law as a sugar-high stimulus. They sold it as a refashioning of the incentives in the American economy — one that would unleash more investment, better efficiency and higher wages, along with enough growth to offset any revenue lost to the government from lower tax rates.”
There is a caveat here “It has fattened the paychecks of most American workers” So, guess who will have to pay higher taxes on those fattened paychecks??? Be ready workers, you’re about to get skinned.
Johnson said that he was gonna bust his butt getting the Farm Bill through, turns out, that bun has been cooked. Look how it will work:
“One priority for Conaway has been increased subsidies for certain farm corporations. Just like with food stamps, there are limits on who can get farm subsidies, based on how much money they make. Farmers earning more than $900,000 annually aren’t eligible, and for those who are, payments are capped at $125,000 annually per farmer.
The Senate bill would lower the income limit to $700,000, while Conaway’s House bill would leave the current limit and actually make it easier for farmer family members and partners in certain corporations to qualify for the full $125,000. Under current law, a corporation counts as one person for subsidy purposes. The proposal would expand eligibility to each partner in certain firms.
The provision would seem to benefit large companies. Only 5 percent of farm businesses are the type of corporation that would qualify for the new benefits, though such firms are responsible for more than 26 percent of production value, according to the Congressional Research Service.” Farm workers should be getting more for their work as it looks like the boss’s are gonna cut a fat hog.