H-2A Employers Explained: Who’s Hiring and What It Costs
If you’ve spent any time in agricultural circles, you’ve heard the term “H-2A” thrown around — sometimes with relief, sometimes with frustration. But there’s a part of the conversation that doesn’t get enough attention: the employers themselves.
The H-2A program is built entirely around a specific employer-to-worker relationship. A farm, ranch, nursery, or agricultural operation applies for the workers. They’re responsible for the wages, the housing, the transportation — the whole picture. So who are these employers, and what does it actually take to be one?
The Program Is Bigger Than Most People Realize
Let’s start with the scale, because it’s genuinely staggering.
In fiscal year 2024, nearly 385,000 H-2A positions were certified by the Department of Labor — a figure that represents roughly 17% of the entire U.S. hired agricultural workforce, according to data from the American Farm Bureau Federation and the 2022 Census of Agriculture. A decade ago, that number was closer to 85,000.
The growth didn’t happen by accident. The domestic labor supply available for farm work has shrunk considerably — the Census of Agriculture found nearly 600,000 fewer hired farm employees between 2012 and 2022 — and H-2A has expanded to fill that gap. The program has no visa cap, which is unusual among U.S. work visa categories and is a big reason it’s been able to scale the way it has.
Where Are H-2A Employers Concentrated?
The program isn’t spread evenly across the country. According to the Department of Labor’s FY 2024 data, just five states account for nearly half of all certified H-2A positions:
- Florida — 47,416 positions (12.3% of all certifications)
- Georgia — 43,436 positions (11.3%)
- California — 37,511 positions (9.7%)
- Washington — 35,884 positions (9.3%)
- North Carolina — 27,532 positions (7.2%)
Florida leads the pack, driven by year-round crop diversity — citrus, vegetables, berries. Georgia’s surge reflects the labor intensity of its onion, peach, and blueberry industries. Washington and California bring large-scale fruit and tree nut operations into the mix.
Meanwhile, only 33% of all H-2A positions in 2024 were certified in states outside the top 10. If you’re in a state like Kansas or Iowa, H-2A employers exist — but the program looks very different than it does in the Southeast.
You can explore employers by state on FarmingWork’s state employer pages, which pull directly from the USDA H-2A employer dataset.
What Makes Someone an H-2A Employer?
This is where things get interesting. H-2A employers aren’t a monolith. The DOL data shows that 70% of employers in FY 2024 were certified for fewer than 10 workers — meaning the typical H-2A employer is a relatively small farm operation trying to cover a harvest window or a planting season.
At the same time, the top 300 employers (each certified for 250 or more workers) accounted for roughly half of all H-2A job certifications. So you have this split: thousands of small farms using the program modestly, and a much smaller group of large agricultural operations that lean on it heavily.
Becoming an H-2A employer isn’t a simple process. Before bringing in any foreign workers, an employer must:
- Demonstrate they tried and failed to find available U.S. workers for the positions
- Offer wages at or above the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) — a federally mandated minimum that varies by state and was set at a national average of $17.43/hour in 2025
- Provide free housing that meets federal safety and sanitation standards
- Cover transportation costs to and from the workers’ home country
- Maintain compliance with DOL regulations throughout the employment period
That housing requirement alone adds real cost. USDA estimates place housing costs at somewhere between $9,000 and $13,000 per worker — costs that make the per-head economics very different depending on the scale of the operation.
The Employers You Might Not Expect
When people think of H-2A employers, they tend to picture large industrial farms. And yes, operations of that size are absolutely part of the picture. But the dataset tells a more varied story.
Nurseries and greenhouse operations are increasingly prominent H-2A users. Tobacco farms in the Southeast rely heavily on the program. Livestock operations, equipment operators, and general farm labor crews all appear in the data. According to the DOL, 83% of H-2A jobs in FY 2024 were for crop workers, with agricultural equipment operators (8%) and animal agriculture workers (5%) making up most of the remainder.
Some employers are direct-hire farms applying on their own behalf. Others are agricultural associations or farm labor contractors (FLCs) that pool applications across multiple operations — a structure that helps smaller farms share some of the administrative burden.
Why This Matters for Workers Looking for Agricultural Jobs
If you’re someone actively looking for farm work — seasonal or otherwise — understanding who the H-2A employers are in a given region is genuinely useful. These are employers who’ve gone through a formal federal process, documented their job offerings, and committed to specific wage and housing terms. That creates a level of transparency that’s harder to find with informal hiring.
The FarmingWork employer profiles pull from the USDA H-2A dataset and organize that information by employer so job seekers can research who’s hiring in their target area. Whether you’re a domestic worker who qualifies for the same wage protections as H-2A workers (employers are required to offer H-2A wage rates to U.S. workers performing the same duties), or you’re trying to understand the agricultural labor landscape more broadly, knowing the employer landscape is a solid starting point.
What’s Changing
Growth in the H-2A program has slowed somewhat — FY 2024’s increase was under 2% for the second consecutive year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, after a decade of double-digit annual growth in many years. Rising program costs, evolving AEWR regulations, and administrative complexity have all contributed.
But the underlying forces driving H-2A demand — a shrinking domestic agricultural labor force, an aging farm workforce, and consistent seasonal production needs — aren’t going away. FY 2025 data suggests the program may be approaching 400,000 certified positions for the first time.
The employer base will keep evolving too. As costs rise, smaller operations may find the program harder to access, while larger farms and labor associations with the infrastructure to manage compliance may increase their share. That’s a trend worth watching, both for workers and for anyone tracking the economics of U.S. food production.
FarmingWork maintains employer profiles sourced from the USDA H-2A dataset. Browse all employers at farmingwork.com/employer-profiles or filter by state at farmingwork.com/employer-profiles/states.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Labor, H-2A Selected Statistics FY2024 Q4
American Farm Bureau Federation, Critical Farm Labor Visa Use Ticks Up (December 2024)
American Farm Bureau Federation, Debunking H-2A Myths
farmdoc daily, University of Illinois, The Growing Role of H-2A Workers in U.S. Agriculture (July 2025)
UC Davis Rural Migration News, H-2A: FY24, Courts
Fresh Fruit Portal, H-2A program nearly tops 400,000 requested positions (April 2026)
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