Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse offer sit among all 261,690 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 261,690 jobs nationally, Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse make up 0.17% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 175,340 of those jobs, the top three states hold 73.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in California (location quotient 5.72, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $14,110 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($46,370) is 1.4 times the 10th percentile ($32,260), a gap of $14,110 a year. The mean of $37,850 sitting above the median of $35,690 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 175,340 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Wyoming would lead at $44,760. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse stands number 134 by employment and number 780 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations, the group median wage is $46,710 across 13 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 24% less than its group median, and it supplies 59.3% of the group's 440,980 jobs. In 25 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $35,690, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Bakersfield-Delano, CA is the largest metro employer with 34,210 jobs, 13.1% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $23,070 a year, against $47,510 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $35,690 works out to $2,974 a month before taxes, $1,373 per biweekly paycheck, and $686 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($34,280) to the 75th ($38,950) is worth $4,670 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $39,259 would sit between the median ($35,690) and the 75th percentile ($38,950), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $34,280, is $1,410 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers, Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products, Logging Equipment Operators, Agricultural Inspectors, Forest and Conservation Workers, Agricultural Workers, All Other. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.