Secretary Brooke Rollins announced today that the USDA will discontinue the Farm Labor Survey. The FLS has been misused by the DoL for years as the floor for wages and establishment of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR). This puts the ball in the Department of Labor’s court as to the calculation of the AEWR.

The USDA has been less than transparent about how the survey was developed so there was no way to adjust or account for the effect of the expanded use of H-2A in the results. It is widely held that the H-2A wages created a feedback loop that continually increased the average and therefore the AEWR.

This just hitting the press at this point and was a total surprise. Since the Blog auto posts at 3PM eastern, we wanted to get this out as soon as possible.

We do NOT know what the future of AEWR calculation will look like because this is so fresh and there has not been a statement from the Department of Labor. The Press release from The National Council of Agriculture Employers is attached.