Farm Worker Wages: Comparing US and Mexico Agricultural Labor Economics

Farm workers in the United States earn far more than farm workers in Mexico: our preliminary look suggests US agricultural take-home pay is roughly four times higher even after adjusting for cost of living. That gap is a big part of why California avocados cost more to grow than imported ones, and it is central to understanding the future of family farming in California. Following our recent discussion on California Assembly Bill 1066, we received valuable feedback and questions regarding field compensation and the competitive landscape between domestic growers and foreign imports. A preliminary look into international labor comparisons revealed an intriguing figure: when adjusted for local cost of living and purchasing power, agricultural take-home pay in the United States appears to be approximately four times higher than in Mexico.

Because this disparity has wide-ranging implications for farm workers, growers, and grocery store consumers, we want to dig into the economic reality behind the numbers.

The Economic Context Behind AB 1066 and Agricultural Overtime

California’s AB 1066 fundamentally restructured agricultural labor rules by phasing in overtime pay for farm workers after an 8-hour workday or a 40-hour workweek. The stated intent was to bring farm labor standards in line with other industrial sectors.

However, small family farms operate under market conditions distinct from other industries:

• Price-Taking Realities: Unlike manufacturers or retail businesses, individual family farms cannot simply mark up prices to offset higher labor inputs. Fresh produce prices are largely dictated by wholesale packing houses and global market supply.
• Global Competition: California growers must compete against produce imported from countries with significantly lower regulatory burdens, water rates, and wage floors.
• Worker Take-Home Hours: In response to strict overtime thresholds, many operations have been forced to cap worker schedules at 40 hours per week, sometimes reducing the total weekly take-home pay that seasonal workers rely on during harvest windows.

Analyzing the 4x Wage Disparity: Purchasing Power and Cost of Living

Nominal wage comparisons between nations only tell part of the story. A dollar earned in Southern California does not purchase the same basket of goods as a dollar converted into pesos in Michoacán or Jalisco.

To make a meaningful comparison, agricultural economists look at purchasing power parity (PPP). When factoring in housing, healthcare, food, and basic necessities, our initial research suggests that US farm labor earnings provide roughly four times the real purchasing power of equivalent agricultural work in Mexico.

While this highlights the relatively higher purchasing capacity of US agricultural wages on an international scale, it also underscores the tremendous cost pressure placed on domestic family farms trying to remain competitive against imported crops.

Why Is Avocado Farming So Labor-Intensive?

Labor matters more for avocados than for many crops because so much of the work cannot be done by machine. A few reasons, several of them spelled out in Avocado Production in California: A Cultural Handbook for Growers, Book One:

• Picking is done in several passes. Hass growers commonly size-pick: the largest fruit (size 48 and larger) comes off first, then at least one more size pick, then a final strip-pick of everything left. Each pass means crews walking the whole grove again.
• The trees are big. An unpruned Hass tree can reach 50 to 60 feet. Keeping fruit within reach takes regular topping and pruning, and harvest on a tall tree means ladders and picking poles.
• The groves are steep. Many Southern California groves have been planted on steep hillsides since the 1970s, made possible by low-volume irrigation. The handbook notes that avocados grow well on slopes but harvest gets harder, and that the terrain is often too steep for spray rigs.
• Labor is part of site selection. The handbook lists nearness to labor, grove managers and a packinghouse among the practical factors to weigh before planting a new grove.
• Irrigation needs hands, too. Even with filters and chlorine or acid treatment, the handbook says drip lines must still be walked, laterals flushed and filters back-flushed, and lines checked during and after every harvest because pickers break risers and coyotes chew the tubing.

Put together, a California avocado grove is a hand-harvested crop on difficult ground, which is why a change in the cost of an hour of labor shows up so directly in what it costs to grow a pound of fruit. We break down our own numbers in how we lost $30,203 growing Hass avocados.

How Does the Wage Gap Connect to Imported Avocados?

This is not a new worry. For most of the last century, Mexican avocados were kept out of the US entirely by a USDA pest quarantine that began in 1914. When the USDA began allowing certified Mexican Hass into some states in 1997, the handbook written for California growers named two concerns. The first was pests. The second was that fruit produced in countries with low labor costs and low water costs, in many cases no cost for water at all, would compete with unfavorable results against California fruit at the marketplace.

Mexico was already the world’s largest avocado producer, and imports have grown since. When imported fruit sets the shelf price, a California grower cannot pass higher labor costs on to the buyer, which is the price-taking problem described above.

Calling On Agricultural Economists and Researchers

We want to ensure our reporting and discussions are grounded in rigorous data rather than assumptions. If you are an economist, an ag research specialist, or someone with access to peer-reviewed studies comparing international farm labor economics, we invite your collaboration:

• What do the most recent comprehensive economic models show regarding take-home pay across borders?
• How do non-wage benefits and regional cost-of-living indexes alter the baseline numbers?
• What long-term effects does this disparity have on domestic food security and family farm survival?

We invite you to share citations, white papers, and economic analyses in the comments section below. By examining verified data together, we can provide transparency about how agricultural policy impacts both the people who harvest our food and the farms that sustain our communities.

This is part of our complete guide to what it really costs to run a California avocado farm — the grower statement, farm gate pricing, and the numbers behind a family grove.