A Profile of Hired Farmworkers, 1990 Annual Averages

An average 886,000 persons age 15 years and older were employed per week as hired farmworkers in 1990. Hired farmworkers tend to be younger and less educated than other wage and salary workers and are more likely to be male, Hispanic, and never married. The median weekly earnings of hired farmworkers was $200, significantly less than the median $360 of all wage and salary workers. The Pacific region (California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska) employed 24 percent of all U.S. hired farmworkers. This report is the first in a new series examining the demographic and employment characteristics of hired farmworkers, with data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) earnings microdata file