The number of workers paid by farmers and agricultural services totaled 47,000 for the week of July 7 through 13. Farmers hired 43,000 workers compared with 52,000 in April and 48,000 in July l, 2001. Agricultural services provided 4,000 paid workers, down 7,000 from the 11,000 provided last quarter, but up 2,000 from the 2,000 supplied a year ago. Rainfall over nearly all localities slowed some farm activities during the survey week with some hay quality lessened due to a delay in baling. Producers sprayed a few peanut and hay fields for insects. Growers harvested tobacco and a very small amount of citrus for fresh squeezed juice outlets. Grove caretakers mowed, chopped and disced cover crops, applied fertilizer and herbicide to young trees and resets, andhedged and topped as needed. Okra harvesting was active in Miami-Dade County.

  The July 2002 all hired worker wage rate averaged $8.55 per hour, down eight cents or one percent from the April 2002 wage of $8.63, and down fourteen cents or about two percent from the $8.69 paid last year. Farmers paid an average of $8.48 per hour, nine cents below the $8.57 paid in April, and 17 cents lower than the $8.65 paid last year. Agricultural services paid workers an average of $9.25 per hour, 25 cents above the $9.00 paid last quarter, but 29 cents below the $9.54 paid last year.

  There were 1.21 million hired workers on the Nation's farms and ranches during the week of July 7-13, 2002, down 12 percent from a year ago. There were 966,000 workers hired directly by farm operators. Agricultural Service employees on farms and ranches made up the remaining 240,000 workers.

  Farm operators paid their hired workers an average wage rate of $8.60 per hour during the July 2002 survey week, up 31 cents from a year earlier. Field workers received an average of $7.91 per hour, up 21 cents from last July. Livestock workers earned $8.37 per hour compared with $7.89 a year earlier. The Field and Livestock worker combined wage rate was up 27 cents from last year. Number of hours worked averaged 39.7 hours for hired workers during the survey week, down 0.2 hours from a year ago.

  Increases in number of hired farm workers over last year occurred in the Southeast (Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina), Pacific (Oregon and Washington), Northern Plains (Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota), and Corn Belt II (Iowa and Missouri) regions. In the Southeast, showers were widely scattered causing only slight delays in the harvests of fruit, vegetables, hay and tobacco. Weather conditions in the Pacific region were ideal for all field activities, despite a few showers in western Oregon. Extreme heat in the Northern Plains caused further drying in small grain fields bringing harvest activity to peak levels earlier than normal. Although heavy rains were received in northern Iowa, the remainder of the Corn Belt II region experienced no significant delays in field activities.

  The largest decreases in number of hired farm workers, from a year ago, were in the Corn Belt I (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio), Lake (Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin), SouthernPlains (Oklahoma and Texas), Northeast I (New England and New York) and Appalachian II (Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virgin- ia) regions. Cooler temperatures from mid-week onward in the Corn Belt I region advanced work activities ahead of normal with fewer workers working longer hours. Moderate to heavy rains in the western half of the Lake region slowed field activities for one to two days. Many fields in Texas in the Southern Plains region were still saturated from the previous week's flooding, which limited progress of field activities. In the Northeast I region, the hot, dry conditions pushed field crop maturity ahead of normal, lessening the need for part-time field workers. Scattered showers, some locally heavy, curtailed field activities in the Appalachian II region.

  Hired farm worker wage rates were above a year ago in all but four regions. The largest increases occurred in the Corn Belt II, Northeast I and Appalachian I (North Carolina and Virginia) regions. The higher wages resulted from the unseasonable weather's impact on crop development and limited days suitable for fieldwork, which required fewer part-time workers during the survey week.

Program Modifications: NASS discontinued collection of data for self-employed, unpaid and migrant farm labor as of the July 2002 survey period. In this publication, data on the percent of All Hired Workers that are migrant workers and All Workers (including Self-Employed and Unpaid) will not be available. In the upcoming October 2002 publication, data will not be published on the annual average number of Self-Employed and Unpaid workers in agriculture.

Table 1 -- Florida agricultural workers, number of workers, wage rates, and hours worked, July 7 - 13, 2002, with comparisons
Employer, Year, and survey week	Hired Workers
	Number of workers			Hours Worked Per Week	Wages Paid by Type of Work
	All	Expected to work			All	Field	Livestock
		150 days or more	149 days or less
HIRED BY FARMERS		Thousands		Hours	Dollars Per Hour 1/
2002
July 7 - 13	43.0	38.0	5.0	37.5	8.48	7.25	7.80
April 7 - 13	52.0	46.0	6.0	40.6	8.57	7.75	7.50
January 6 - 12	62.0	50.0	12.0	37.2	8.97	8.15	*8.55
2001
October 7 - 13	51.0	44.0	7.0	41.8	8.84	7.70	8.00
July 8 - 14	48.0	43.0	5.0	40.8	8.65	7.50	7.65
April 8 - 14	63.0	52.0	11.0	39.9	8.40	7.75	7.90
January 7 - 13	55.0	47.0	8.0	37.6	8.29	7.65	7.90
2000
October 8 - 14	50.0	43.0	7.0	38.9	8.72	8.00	7.30
July 9 - 15	46.0	42.0	4.0	42.0	8.47	7.75	7.45
HIRED BY AGRICULTURAL SERVICES
2002
July 7 - 13	4.0			42.5	9.25
April 7 - 13	11.0			34.0	9.00
January 6 - 12	19.0			38.5	8.25
2001
October 7 - 13	5.0			34.0	8.70
July 8 - 14	2.0			43.5	9.54
April 8 - 14	14.0			39.0	8.30
January 7 - 13	18.0			29.5	8.70
2000
October 8 - 14	11.0			32.0	8.80
July 9 - 15	2.0			43.0	9.00
HIRED BY BOTH FARMERS & AGRICULTURAL SERVICES
2002
July 7 - 13	47.0				8.55
April 7- 13	63.0				8.63
January 6 - 12	81.0				8.80
2001
October 7 - 13	56.0				8.83
July 8 - 14	50.0				8.69
April 8 - 14	77.0				8.38
January 7 - 13	73.0				8.37
2000
October 8 - 14	61.0				8.73
July 9 -15	48.0				8.49
1/ Benefits, such as housing and meals, are provided some workers but the values are not included in the wage rates.

Table 2 -- Number of workers hired by farmers, wage rates, and hours worked, selected States, July 7 - 13, 2002, with comparisons 1/
Item	Florida	California	Texas & Oklahoma	Arizona & New Mexico	Hawaii	United States 2/
	Thousands
All hired workers
July 7 - 13, 2002	43	240	74	17	7	966
April 7 - 13, 2002	52	245	60	20	7	890
July 8 - 14, 2001	48	242	85	18	7	1,039
Expected to work
150 days or more
July 7 - 13, 2002	38	190	55	14	6	683
April 7 - 13, 2002	46	209	50	18	6	722
July 8 - 14, 2001	43	192	62	15	6	722
149 days or less
July 7 - 13, 2002	5	50	19	3	1	283
April 7 - 13, 2002	6	36	10	2	1	168
July 8 - 14, 2001	5	50	23	3	1	317
	Dollars per hour 3/
All hired worker wage rate
July 7 - 13, 2002	8.48	9.04	7.53	8.03	11.29	8.60
April 7 - 13, 2002	8.57	9.13	7.95	8.21	11.14	8.83
July 8 - 14, 2001	8.65	8.76	7.23	8.12	11.21	8.29
Wages by type of worker
Field & Livestock
July 7 - 13, 2002	7.38	8.39	7.14	7.43	9.67	8.02
April 7 - 13, 2002	7.72	8.47	7.31	7.71	9.43	8.15
July 8 - 14, 2001	7.53	8.10	6.85	7.46	9.60	7.75
Field
July 7 - 13, 2002	7.25	8.24	7.06	7.15	9.65	7.91
April 7 - 13, 2002	7.75	8.33	6.92	7.51	9.40	8.06
July 8 - 14, 2001	7.50	7.97	6.58	7.00	9.55	7.70
Livestock
July 7 - 13, 2002	7.80	9.80	7.23	8.11	4/	8.37
April 7 - 13, 2002	7.50	10.20	7.78	8.35	4/	8.43
July 8 - 14, 2001	7.65	9.49	7.23	8.52	4/	7.89
	Average hours per week
Hours worked by all hired workers
July 7 - 13, 2002	37.5	45.7	39.7	42.8	38.0	39.7
April 7 - 13, 2002	40.6	43.7	39.6	46.2	35.8	40.2
July 8 - 14, 2001	40.8	44.3	38.3	47.7	38.3	39.9
1/ Excludes Agricultural Service workers. 2/ United States excludes Alaska. 3/ Value of any perquisites provided are not included in wage rates. 4/ Insufficient data for this category; included in all hired wages.

Survey Procedures: These data were collected by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) during the last two weeks of July using sampling procedures to ensure every employer of agricultural workers had a chance of being selected.

  Two samples of farm operators are selected. First, NASS maintains a list of farms that hire farm workers. Farms on this list are classified by size and type. Those expected to employ large numbers of workers are selected with greater frequency than those hiring few or no workers. A second sample consists of segments of land scientifically selected from an area sampling frame. Each June, highly trained interviewers locate each selected land segment and identify every farm operating land within the sample segment's boundaries. The names of farms found in these area segments are matched against the NASS list of farms; those not found on the list are included in the labor survey sample to represent all farms. This methodology is known as multiple frame sampling, with an area sample used to measure the incompleteness of the list. Additionally, a list of agricultural service firms was sampled in California and Florida. The survey reference week was July 7-13, 2002.

   Reliability: Two types of errors, sampling and non- sampling, are possible in an estimate based on a sample survey. Both types affect the "precision" of the estimates.

  Sampling error occurs because a complete census is not taken. The sampling error measures the variation in estimates from the average of all possible samples. An estimate of 100 with a sampling error of 1 would mean that chances are 19 out of 20 that the estimates from all possible samples averaged together would be between 98 and 102; which is the survey estimate, plus or minus two times the sampling error. The sampling error expressed as a percent of the estimate is called the relative sampling error. The relative sampling error for number of hired workers at the U.S. level was 2.9 percent. The relative samplingerror for the number of hired workers generally ranged between 5 and 19 percent at the regional level. The U.S. all hired farm worker wage rate had a relative sampling error of 0.9 percent. The relative sampling error was 0.9 percent for the combined field and livestock worker wage rate. Relative sampling errors for the all hired farm worker wage rate generally ranged between 1 and 6 percent at the regional levels. Relative sampling errors for wage rates published by type of farm and economic class of farm ranged between 1 and 19 percent at the regional level.

  Non-sampling errors can occur in a complete census as well as in sample surveys. They are caused by the inability to obtain correct information from each operation sampled, differences in interpreting questions or definitions, and mistakes in editing, coding, or processing the data. Special efforts are taken at each step of the survey to minimize non-sampling errors.

   Revision Policy: Farm labor information is subject to revision the next time the information is published or the year after the original publication date. The basis for revision must be supported by additional data that directly affect the level of the estimate. Worker numbers and wage rates for July 2001 and April 2002 were subject to revision with this report. Revisions were made and previous data are reprinted in this report for your information.

   Next Farm Labor Publication Date: The November 15th report will have information for the survey week of October 6- 12, 2002. The report will include the number of All Hired Workers, Average Hours Worked by Hired Workers and the All Hired Worker Wage Rates at the regional and U.S. levels. The wage rate for field, livestock, and combined field and livestock workers will also be available at the regional and U.S. level. The number of Agricultural Service Workers and the corresponding wage rates will be published for California and Florida.