H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rate

The Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) is the wage floor particular to the H-2A program for temporary agricultural workers. Congress conditioned H-2A certification on a finding that hiring foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages of U.S. farmworkers, and the Department of Labor meets that condition by publishing a rate the employer must offer to its H-2A workers and to U.S. workers in corresponding employment. The rule is 20 CFR 655.120; range herding has its own monthly rate under 655.200 to 655.235.

The highest-of rule

Under 655.120(a) an employer must offer, advertise and pay at least the highest of six figures: the AEWR; a prevailing wage rate for the crop or activity, where the OFLC Administrator has approved a state survey (these rates, which may be piece rates, are posted in the Agricultural Online Wage Library); the agreed-upon collective bargaining wage; the federal minimum wage; the state minimum wage; and any other rate the employer intends to pay. When the figures are in different units, the job order must list the highest in each unit. If a higher AEWR is published during the contract, the employer must pay it from the publication date; if a lower one is published, the rate guaranteed on the job order continues.

How the rate is set since October 2025

Before October 2025 the AEWR for most jobs was the combined field and livestock wage for a state or region from the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Labor Survey, with OEWS data used for occupations that survey did not report; the interim final rule cites the Department of Agriculture’s discontinuation of that survey among its reasons for acting. An interim final rule effective October 2, 2025 replaced that method with one built on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, the same survey behind the occupation pages on this site. Under the amended 655.120(b):

• For jobs in the field and livestock workers (combined) category, the AEWR is the statewide annual average hourly gross wage reported by OEWS for the five occupation codes the rule groups together (graders and sorters of agricultural products; agricultural equipment operators; crop, nursery and greenhouse farmworkers; farm, ranch and aquacultural animal workers; and hand packers and packagers).
• For all other occupations, the AEWR is the statewide OEWS average for that occupation’s code.
• Each AEWR is set at two skill levels: level I is the mean of the lowest third of the wage distribution, level II is the mean of the whole distribution. The level follows the qualifications in the employer’s job offer.
• Where a state figure is not reported at a level, the national figure at that level is used. “State” includes the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
• A downward compensation adjustment, computed from HUD fair market rents for a four-bedroom unit and capped at 30 percent of the AEWR, is published for each state and may be applied only to H-2A workers who receive employer-provided housing at no cost, not to U.S. workers in corresponding employment.

The OFLC Administrator must publish a Federal Register notice at least once a calendar year setting each AEWR and adjustment, effective on publication. The notice of August 3, 2026 did so from the May 2025 OEWS release; for the states and employers covered by a 2024 court order, the same notice gave an effective date two weeks later. The occupation code and level for a job are decided by what the worker will do for more than half the workdays of the contract and the job order’s qualifications.

Where the rates are and why this site does not reproduce them

The statewide rates by occupation code and skill level, with the housing adjustments, are published as a spreadsheet on the Department of Labor’s AEWR page, which the Federal Register notice refers readers to rather than printing a table. On the day this page was reviewed, the page’s own text still described the Farm Labor Survey method and listed rates with December 2024 effective dates beside a link to the current workbook. Because the rates now exist only in that file, and because the structure (a rate for each state, occupation code and skill level, with a housing adjustment) is a wage library rather than a table, this site links the source and does not mirror it; the attempt is recorded in the repository’s data-sources document. The site’s state profiles show the OEWS averages the AEWRs are built from, but a survey mean is not an AEWR until the Administrator publishes it.

Range occupations and the surety bond figure

Herding and livestock production on the range use a single national monthly AEWR, adjusted each year by the Employment Cost Index for wages and salaries and announced in a separate notice (655.211). The AEWR page also publishes an “average AEWR”, the simple average of the rates applicable to the crop farmworker code, used to size the surety bonds that H-2A labor contractors must post under 655.132.

Related

The AEWR is one floor among several; the Wage and Hour Division enforces it. For temporary nonagricultural workers the comparable floor is the H-2B prevailing wage, set case by case rather than published by state.