Working Paper #002 - Concentration at the Top: Labor Access and Agricultural Production in the United States

(Versión en español disponible)

Research Abstract: The rapid expansion of the H-2A temporary agricultural visa program has coincided with declining domestic farm employment and persistent specialization in U.S. agricultural production. This paper creates the first systematic concentration dataset for the H-2A labor market. This paper also examines how structural access to H-2A labor relates to patterns of agricultural concentration across U.S. states. Using newly constructed labor and commodity concentration measures and state-level panel data from 2015 to 2024, the analysis documents systematic co-movement between employer concentration in the H-2A program and concentration in agri- cultural production. This relationship is highly asymmetric: extreme commodity dominance is associated with concentration of H-2A employment at the single largest employer, but broader measures display no systematic relationship. The association is concentrated in thin markets where a single crop and a single employer jointly dominate, and attenuates in larger agricultural states. States with higher employer concentration also exhibit systematically lower prevailing wages, a pattern robust to excluding the largest and smallest H-2A states, though the within- state wage relationship is fully absorbed by annual federal wage floor updates. Labor concen- tration declines across all metrics as H-2A scale increases, suggesting dominance weakens as participation expands. These findings provide a descriptive framework for understanding where H-2A labor and production concentration are linked in U.S. agriculture and where institutional wage floors rather than market competition determine worker compensation.