Farm Labor Contractors and Crew Leaders (U.S.) — Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 115115. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for grouping businesses.

1. Overview

A farm labor contractor (FLC) is a middleman for farm work. Instead of a grower hiring, paying, and managing a harvest crew directly, the grower pays a contractor a per-hour, per-acre, or per-box rate, and the contractor recruits the workers, runs the payroll, supplies supervision and transportation, arranges housing, and — increasingly — handles the paperwork for foreign guest workers. A "crew leader" is the same idea at small scale: one person who assembles and directs a picking crew. The business is a labor-supply, compliance, and logistics service, not farming itself. [1][8]

Why this matters: contractors are the plumbing of America's fresh-food supply. Fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery crops still need hands to plant, thin, prune, and pick, and a growing share of that labor is routed through contractors rather than hired straight off the farm. As the domestic farm workforce shrinks and ages and immigration enforcement tightens, growers lean harder on contractors who can source and legally sponsor labor. The business is essential, low-margin, and unusually exposed to wage rules, immigration policy, and litigation. [5][6]

Public vs. private ways in: there is effectively no pure-play, publicly traded U.S. farm labor contractor — the industry is almost entirely private, small, and owner-operated. Public-market investors get exposure only indirectly: through the labor-intensive produce companies that are the contractors' customers, through broad staffing companies that share the same employment-services economics, or through automation firms trying to replace hand labor. Private investors can own or roll up regional contractors, build H-2A agencies, or back the venture-funded software-and-staffing platforms now professionalizing the sector (see Sections 4 and 10). Demand is structurally attractive; returns depend on labor availability, regulatory execution, working capital, and reputation.

2. What it is, and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 115115 covers establishments primarily engaged in supplying labor for agricultural production or harvesting — the contractors and crew leaders themselves, not the farms they serve, and without providing farm-operation management. [2]

What it excludes (and where those activities are counted instead):

• Growers who hire their own field workers directly — those workers are counted under the farm's own code, in crop production (NAICS 111) or animal production (NAICS 112), not here. This is the single biggest reason the industry's official employment looks small (Section 3).
• Soil preparation, planting, and cultivating services (NAICS 115112), machine-based crop harvesting (115113), postharvest crop activities (115114), and farm management services (115116) — adjacent "support activities for crop production" codes for work done with equipment or as a management service rather than as raw labor supply. Support activities for animal production sit in NAICS 115210. [2]
• Non-farm temporary staffing agencies, which sit in employment services (NAICS 5613).

H-2A agent ≠ FLC. The H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa (Section 7) can be used by growers, agricultural associations, joint employers, or contractors. Some agencies mainly process visas and payroll; others employ and manage the crews themselves. Not every H-2A filer is an FLC, and not every FLC uses H-2A. [8][14]

Ownership mix. Overwhelmingly private and small: sole proprietors, family firms, limited-liability companies (LLCs), and partnerships, many organized around a single crew leader with a van and a client list. A minority are larger, professionalized operators — some affiliated with big grower-packers — and a new layer of technology-and-staffing companies is emerging on top. The federal statistics do not publish a legal-form or public-vs-private ownership breakdown, so precise ownership shares are unavailable; the largest visible players are all privately held. [1]

3. How big it is

Our ground-truth federal figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP), which counts only employer establishments (businesses with paid employees) and measures employment in the week of March 12. For NAICS 115115 in 2023:

That works out to roughly 29 employees and about $1.15 million of payroll per establishment, and about $39,700 of annual payroll per employee — figures derived from the CBP totals above, not reported industry ratios. Note what annual payroll is not: it is wages paid before deductions, not contractor revenue, gross profit, or market size, and the federal file gives us no revenue, margin, utilization, or market-share data. The gap between the full year (~$749.6M) and four times the winter first quarter (~$599M) is the harvest bulge — this is a seasonal business whose dollars concentrate in spring and summer. [1] The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) sets the small-business size standard for this industry at $19 million in average annual receipts — a federal-contracting threshold, not a claim that larger firms are unusual, and a ceiling most operators fall well under. [4]

The undercount is large, and it matters here more than in most industries. The 650 establishments and ~18,900 employees badly understate the real footprint:

1. Most farm labor is booked to the farm, not to the contractor. The Department of Labor's (DOL) National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) found roughly 11% of crop farmworkers were employed by contractors in 2017–18, with the other ~89% hired directly by growers and counted under the farm's own NAICS code. [7] Total U.S. hired farm employment dwarfs this industry's payroll count: the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook puts agricultural-worker jobs at about 812,600 in 2024, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) counts on the order of 1.9 million hired farmworkers over a year. [5][6]
2. Tiny and informal operators fall below the count. CBP excludes the self-employed, nonemployer businesses, and firms without an Employer Identification Number (EIN); many crew leaders are individuals or micro-firms without formal payroll. The March reference week also misses seasonal crews that arrive later in the year. The DOL's MSPA registry (Section 7) lists thousands of registered contractors and crew-leader employees nationwide — far more than the 650 CBP employer establishments. [3][8]
3. Undocumented workers are undercounted everywhere. ERS and NAWS estimate roughly 40% of hired crop farmworkers lack legal work authorization, a population that standard payroll statistics capture unevenly. [5]

So: treat the CBP figures as the reliable core for the formal employer slice, but read the industry's true economic importance through the much larger hired-farmworker and H-2A data below.

4. The investable universe

There is no clean public-company table for this industry — no U.S.-listed pure-play farm labor contractor exists. The honest picture is three concentric rings.

Ring 1 — the contractors themselves (all private). The largest operators are private firms, several ranked by the size of their H-2A guest-worker programs. Two different data sets rank them, and they are not directly comparable: annual certification totals (Enlace Latino NC) run larger than a single quarter's certified positions (DOL FY2025 Q1).

MetLife Investment Management reports that FLCs handled about 43% of H-2A workers in FY2024, with higher shares in California and Florida — and forecasts FLCs could become the single largest H-2A employer type by the end of the decade. That is an analytical projection, not an official statistic. [10]

Ring 2 — the technology-and-staffing layer (private, venture-backed). Seso, Inc. automates H-2A recruiting, visa compliance, onboarding, and payroll. It raised a $26 million Series B in 2024 led by BOND (Mary Meeker's firm), with Index Ventures, NFX, SV Angel, and Founders Fund among its backers; it says it signed up more than 88,000 seasonal workers in 2023 and serves a large share of the 100 biggest U.S. agricultural employers. Seso is a workforce-management and compliance platform — not necessarily the legal employer of every worker it supports. This is the most investable growth story in the space, but it is private. [12][15]

Ring 3 — public-market proxies (indirect exposure). Public investors express a view on this industry three ways, none a direct claim on 115115 profits:

• Customers — labor-intensive produce companies that buy contract labor and disclose immigration and wage risk in their filings: Limoneira (Nasdaq: LMNR), Calavo Growers (Nasdaq: CVGW), Mission Produce (Nasdaq: AVO), Fresh Del Monte Produce (NYSE: FDP), Dole plc (NYSE: DOLE), and controlled-environment grower Local Bounti (NYSE: LOCL).
• Same-economics staffing companies — broad workforce-services firms whose filings describe diversified staffing rather than a separate farm-labor segment, but which trade on the same drivers (worker demand, wage pass-through, staffing volume, operating leverage): TrueBlue (NYSE: TBI, parent of PeopleReady) [24], Kelly Services (Nasdaq: KELYA/KELYB) [25], ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) [26], and Adecco Group (SIX: ADEN) [27]. None separately discloses NAICS 115115 exposure.
• Automation — the more speculative "replace hand labor" theme, mostly private (Advanced Farm, Tortuga AgTech) with public exposure via equipment makers Deere (NYSE: DE) and AGCO (NYSE: AGCO).

Tickers, dividends, and valuations belong to these companies, not to the contracting industry itself.

5. How the money works

A farm labor contractor is a labor-supply intermediary that earns a spread. The model:

1. A grower contracts for a crew or labor service.
2. The FLC recruits, employs or furnishes workers, and manages scheduling, transportation, housing, payroll, and compliance.
3. The grower pays an hourly, piece-rate, per-crew, or per-project bill that sits above the wage paid to workers.
4. The FLC keeps the spread after wages and direct operating costs.

The key economics, in terms specific to this business:

• Bill-rate-to-pay-rate spread (the markup). MSPA requires the contractor to disclose, in writing and in both English and Spanish, both the rate it receives from the grower and the rate it pays workers — an unusual transparency rule that exists precisely because the spread is the business. [8] That spread has to cover a heavy cost stack before any profit: employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance (a large and volatile line in agriculture), supervision, transportation, recruiting, bonding, and — for guest workers — housing and visa costs.
• All-in cost per H-2A worker. For contractors running guest-worker crews, the binding number is the total landed cost of an H-2A worker: the mandated wage floor (the Adverse Effect Wage Rate — AEWR; Section 7) plus housing, inbound/outbound transportation, visa and recruitment fees, and program overhead. H-2A employment is temporary/seasonal and can run up to about 10 months. Getting this cost right and billing it through is the whole game. [5][8]
• Volume and days worked. Revenue = headcount deployed × hours (or units) × bill rate. Harvest windows are short, so utilization is about filling as many grower-days as possible in season and redeploying crews across crops and regions.
• Piece-rate productivity. Much field pay is per box or per bin, so crew output per hour drives both worker earnings and billable volume.
• Working capital and credit risk. Contractors typically front the payroll — paying workers before the grower pays the invoice — so cash cycle and grower creditworthiness matter as much as margin. A single unpaid grower or a large wage claim can erase a season's profit.

The most useful operating metrics are filled positions, worker-days delivered, on-time crew arrival, gross profit per worker-day, repeat-grower retention, wage pass-through, housing utilization, workers'-comp claims, receivable days, and client concentration — not manufacturing-style capacity utilization. Bottom line: margins are thin, the business is seasonal and cash-hungry, and profit is a small residual after insurance, compliance, and labor cost, with outsized downside from a single lawsuit or enforcement action. "Quality" is measured in compliance discipline and insurance/loss experience, not brand or pricing power.

6. What drives demand

• Acreage of hand-harvested crops. Demand tracks the mechanization-resistant crops — strawberries, tree fruit, grapes, vegetables, nursery and greenhouse plants. About two-thirds of H-2A jobs are tied to vegetables, fruits, and tree nuts, where manual work is hardest to automate. [5][10]
• Labor intensity. Wages and contract labor make up about 42% of production expenses for greenhouse and nursery operations and 40% for fruit and tree-nut operations, versus ~12% for all farms — so any labor-cost move hits these growers hard and pushes them toward intermediaries. [5]
• A shrinking, aging, less-authorized domestic workforce. Fewer U.S.-born and settled workers enter field work, pushing growers toward contractors who can source labor. [5]
• Growth and complexity of the H-2A program. H-2A certifications rose from just over 48,000 positions in FY2005 to about 385,000 in FY2024 — more than a sevenfold increase (roughly 80% of certified positions become actual visas) — though growth has cooled to under 2% for two straight years. Crucially, contractors now account for ~42–43% of all H-2A positions certified, up from ~13% in 2007, while direct-hire farms fell from ~72% to ~52%. [5][10][13][14] Every added layer of compliance is, in effect, demand for this industry.
• Compliance outsourcing. Smaller growers often lack staff to handle visa filings, wage rules, payroll, housing, transportation, and recordkeeping; contractors spread those fixed costs across many customers. [10]
• Wage floors. Higher AEWR rates, state minimum wages, and California's phased-in farm overtime raise the dollar volume flowing through contractors' invoices even when headcount is flat.
• Immigration enforcement. Crackdowns cut the available labor pool and push growers toward the legal H-2A channel — and toward the contractors who can run it (Section 9).
• Long-run headwind: automation. Harvest robotics and mechanization are a genuine but gradual threat to hand-labor demand; adoption remains early in most specialty crops.

7. Regulation

This is one of the most heavily regulated forms of labor supply in the U.S., and compliance cost is a competitive variable, not a footnote.

• MSPA (federal). The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act requires most contractors to hold a DOL Certificate of Registration, renewed annually, with specific authorization before housing or transporting covered workers, plus disclosure, wage-payment, recordkeeping, and vehicle-safety standards. Operating without registration is illegal. [8]
• H-2A program. Running guest-worker crews means clearing DOL labor certification and paying at least the highest applicable wage — the AEWR, a local prevailing wage, or the federal/state minimum, whichever is greatest. H-2A labor contractors also face surety-bond requirements designed to protect worker wage claims, plus housing and transportation obligations and the "three-quarters guarantee" (a minimum share of contracted hours). The 2024 AEWRs ranged from about $14.53/hour in the Southeast to $19.75 in California; 2025 rates averaged about $17.43, from $14.83 in the Delta to $19.97 in California. In October 2025 DOL issued a new AEWR methodology that lowers those wage floors — which critics (the Economic Policy Institute, EPI) estimate could cut farmworker pay by $4.4–5.4 billion a year, and which supporters frame as relief for growers. Wage rules here move both ways and are a live policy fight. [5][15][16][18]
• FLSA and joint-employer liability. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a grower using a contractor is almost always a joint employer — so both the contractor and the farm are on the hook for minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping, and either can be liable if the other fails. Agricultural exemptions are fact-specific (in one DOL case, workers lost the overtime exemption once they packed produce grown by other farms). This shared liability shapes how growers choose and audit contractors. [17][28]
• State licensing. Several states layer their own regimes on top. California requires every person engaged in farm-labor contracting to register with the state Labor Commissioner (fees, fingerprinting, a bond, county registrations, and a periodic exam); Washington separately licenses businesses that recruit, supply, employ, or transport farm labor. [19][20]
• Shifting rulebook. The Biden-era 2024 "Farmworker Protection Rule" (expanding H-2A worker protections, including collective action) was partly enjoined by courts, had enforcement suspended in 2025, and is now proposed for rescission — so the exact obligations are in flux. [21]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The industry is highly fragmented: thousands of small, regional, crop-specific contractors, historically with low barriers to entry — a crew leader with a vehicle and relationships could start one. Competition is regional and relationship-driven, and the strongest operators share a recognizable profile: reliable recruiting networks, repeat grower relationships, bilingual field management, housing and transportation capability, clean licensing/compliance records, and enough working capital to fund seasonal payroll. [10]

But the economics are quietly shifting toward scale. Rising compliance burden, workers'-comp and liability insurance, and H-2A administrative complexity reward larger, professionalized operators and the new software-enabled staffing platforms, while squeezing the smallest crew leaders. That is the consolidation thesis: capital, compliance capability, and a clean legal record are becoming a moat where none existed before. No authoritative national concentration ratio or revenue-based market-share measure exists — CBP shows 650 employer establishments averaging ~29 employees, while H-2A data reveal only a small group of visible regional operators. [1][10][11]

Reputation is a real competitive factor because the sector carries genuine legal tail-risk. High-profile wage-theft, human-trafficking, and forced-labor prosecutions in agricultural labor contracting (for example, the federal "Operation Blooming Onion" case in Georgia) have hardened grower diligence and pushed volume toward operators who can demonstrate compliance. Expect consolidation through regional acquisitions, referrals, software adoption, and succession deals rather than large public-company mergers — a forward-looking judgment consistent with the rising FLC share of H-2A certifications. [10][14]

9. Risks

• Wage-rule volatility. AEWR and state wage changes swing the cost base sharply in both directions; a favorable ruling for growers can compress the very spread the contractor lives on, while contractors may be unable to pass higher wage, housing, transportation, and insurance costs through to growers. [15][16]
• Immigration enforcement — a double-edged sword. 2025 saw intensified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity: raids in Oxnard, California in June 2025 were estimated to cut the local farm workforce by 20–40%, with researchers modeling $3–7 billion in crop losses. Enforcement raises demand for legal H-2A intermediation, but it can also freeze operations and directly expose any contractor employing unauthorized workers. By late 2025 the administration was easing raids on farms and speeding H-2A approvals — roughly 420,000 H-2A visas a year — signaling how central this labor question has become. [22][23]
• Joint-employer and wage litigation. Shared FLSA and MSPA liability, plus class-action wage claims, are a recurring and potentially firm-ending cost. [17][28]
• Thin margins and working-capital/credit risk. Fronting payroll against grower invoices exposes contractors to bad debt and cash-flow shocks; insurance-cost inflation erodes an already narrow spread (Section 5).
• Customer concentration. A contractor may depend on a handful of growers, crops, or geographies.
• Reputational and criminal exposure. Trafficking, unsafe-housing, and forced-labor prosecutions can destroy a business and taint the sector. [28]
• Weather and crop cycles. A failed or delayed harvest, or weak commodity prices, cuts billable work with little notice.
• Automation and vertical integration (long-run). Large growers may internalize labor management or automate portions of harvesting; successful harvest robotics would erode core hand-labor demand over time, though specialty crops remain hard to mechanize. [10]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes (indirect only). Because no U.S.-listed pure-play contractor exists, public investors express a view through (a) the labor-intensive produce companies that pay for contract labor — reading their labor-cost and immigration-risk disclosures (LMNR, CVGW, AVO, FDP, DOLE, LOCL); (b) broad staffing companies that trade on the same employment-services economics (TBI, KELYA/KELYB, MAN, ADEN) — checking whether each even discloses agricultural exposure, how much revenue is lower-skilled temporary staffing, and how wage pass-through, workers'-comp, and receivables affect margins; and (c) automation/equipment names positioned to benefit if hand labor gets scarcer or costlier (DE, AGCO). Tickers, dividends, and valuations sit with those companies, not with 115115.

Private routes (where the industry actually is). The real ownership opportunity is private:

• Acquire a regional FLC with strong licenses and repeat growers.
• Build an H-2A agency bundled with payroll and compliance services.
• Roll up local contractors while centralizing recruiting, insurance, transportation, and housing.
• Back the software layer (Seso and peers) industrializing H-2A sourcing and compliance.
• Provide asset-backed working capital to established contractors.

Private due diligence should center on worker arrival and retention, gross profit per worker-day, wage pass-through, customer concentration, receivable aging, housing ownership and compliance, transportation records, workers'-comp claims, licenses, DOL enforcement history, and the depth of the recruiting network — operational and legal discipline far more than top-line growth.

Near-term drivers to watch: the AEWR methodology change and the fate of the 2024 Farmworker Protection Rule (both reshape the cost base); the pace of immigration enforcement versus H-2A facilitation (which sets how much labor routes through contractors at all); continued migration of H-2A volume from direct-hire farms to contractors; and the early trajectory of harvest automation.

Outlook: constructive but execution-heavy. The structural trend — a shrinking domestic farm workforce, specialty-crop dependence, and growers outsourcing an ever-more-complex guest-worker system — points toward steady, if unglamorous, demand for professional contractors, with value accruing to the operators and platforms that can carry the compliance load. The catch is symmetrical: the same labor shortage that creates demand can also compress margins, increase scrutiny, and magnify a single operational failure. That directional read is a judgment, not a guarantee; policy here can reprice the industry in a single rulemaking.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP), NAICS 115115, 2023 (establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll). https://data.census.gov/profile/115115_-_Farm_labor_contractors_and_crew_leaders?codeset=naics~115115
2. U.S. Census Bureau, "NAICS 115115 — Farm Labor Contractors and Crew Leaders" (industry definition, scope, and adjacent codes), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/
3. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns Methodology" (coverage, March-12 reference week, nonemployer/EIN exclusions). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
4. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards," 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. USDA Economic Research Service, "Farm Labor" (hired-farmworker counts, unauthorized share, crop labor-cost shares, H-2A growth). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Agricultural Workers — Occupational Outlook Handbook," 2024–2025 (~812,600 jobs, 2024). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/agricultural-workers.htm
7. U.S. Department of Labor, "Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2017–2018," Research Report No. 14 (~11% employed via contractors). https://www.dol.gov/resource-library/findings-national-agricultural-workers-survey-naws-2017-2018-demographic-and
8. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, "Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA)" and registered-FLC listing. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/agriculture/mspa
9. Enlace Latino NC, "Ten companies that hire the most agricultural workers," 2024 (Fresh Harvest, Foothill Packing, WAFLA, Zirkle Fruit, R&R Harvesting H-2A scale). https://enlacelatinonc.org/en/ten-companies-that-hire-more-agricultural-workers/
10. MetLife Investment Management, "The Evolving Landscape of U.S. Farm Labor," 2026 (FLC share of H-2A ~43% FY2024; leading FLCs; consolidation forecast). https://investments.metlife.com/content/dam/metlifecom/us/investments/insights/research-topics/agricultural-finance/new-articles/the-evolving-landscape-of-us-farm-labor/The-Evolving-Landscape-of-US-Farm-Labor.pdf
11. U.S. Department of Labor, "H-2A Selected Statistics: Fiscal Year 2025, Quarter 1" (Ag Labor 1,670; Empire 847; Dunson 764; Overlook 734 certified positions). https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/oflc/pdfs/H-2A_Selected_Statistics_FY2025_Q1.pdf
12. Seso, Inc., "Seso Closes $26M Series B to Build Critical Software for American Farmers," 2024 (BOND-led round; 88,000 workers in 2023). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240402182570/en/Seso-Closes-%2426M-Series-B-to-Build-Critical-Software-for-American-Farmers
13. American Farm Bureau Federation, "Critical Farm Labor Visa Use Ticks Up," 2025 (~385,000 H-2A positions FY2024; <2% growth). https://www.fb.org/market-intel/critical-farm-labor-visa-use-ticks-up
14. USDA ERS / UC Davis Rural Migration News, "The H-2A Program" (FLC share of H-2A certifications rose from ~13% in FY07 to ~42% in FY24; direct-hire fell 72%→52%). https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/blog/post/?id=2997
15. U.S. Department of Labor / Congressional Research Service, H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates 2024–2025 (2024 range $14.53–$19.75; 2025 avg $17.43, $14.83–$19.97). https://flag.dol.gov/index.php/node/26854
16. Economic Policy Institute, "Trump's new H-2A wage rule will radically cut the wages of all farmworkers," 2025 (–$4.4–5.4B/yr estimate); Federal Register, "Adverse Effect Wage Rate Methodology," Oct. 2, 2025. https://www.epi.org/blog/trumps-new-h-2a-wage-rule-will-radically-cut-the-wages-of-all-farmworkers-new-estimates-show-farmworkers-stand-to-lose-4-4-to-5-4-billion-annually-under-dols-updated-adverse-effec/
17. U.S. Department of Labor, "Fact Sheet #12: Agricultural Employment Under the FLSA" (joint-employer liability). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/12-agricultural-employment-flsa
18. U.S. Department of Labor, "Fact Sheet #26H: H-2A Labor Contractor Surety Bonds." https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/26h-h2a-labor-contractor-surety-bonds
19. California Department of Industrial Relations / California Farm Labor Contractor Association, "Farm Labor Contractor License." https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/flc.htm
20. Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, "Farm Labor Contractor Licensing." https://www.lni.wa.gov/licensing-permits/other-licenses-permits/farm-labor-contractor-licensing
21. Congressional Research Service, "DOL Final Rule Addressing H-2A Worker Protections and Pending Litigation" (LSB11225); Federal Register, "Rescission of Final Rule: Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment," 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/07/02/2025-12315/recission-of-final-rule-improving-protections-for-workers-in-temporary-agricultural-employment-in
22. "Quantifying the Economic Impact of 2025 ICE Raids on California's Agricultural Industry: A Case Study of Oxnard," arXiv preprint, 2025 (20–40% workforce reduction; $3–7B crop losses). https://arxiv.org/html/2508.03787v1
23. Stateline, "Trump allows more foreign ag workers, eases off ICE raids on farms," Nov. 2025 (~420,000 H-2A visas/year). https://stateline.org/2025/11/21/trump-allows-more-foreign-ag-workers-eases-off-ice-raids-on-farms/
24. TrueBlue, Inc. (PeopleReady), Form 10-K, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000768899&type=10-K
25. Kelly Services, Inc., Form 10-K, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000055135&type=10-K
26. ManpowerGroup Inc., Form 10-K, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000871763&type=10-K
27. Adecco Group AG, Annual Report 2025. https://www.adeccogroup.com/investors
28. U.S. Department of Labor, "Florida Agriculture Employer Pays Wages and Damages After U.S. Department of Labor Uncovers Wage Violations," 2019 (FLSA agricultural-exemption enforcement). https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20190826-0