This analysis was conducted by researchers at Manifest Law using certified labor certification data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification Performance Data and employment estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program. Labor certification requests submitted through the H-2A and H-2B programs were used to measure employer demand for seasonal foreign labor, while workforce estimates were used to calculate requested workers per 10,000 resident employees at the national, state, and metropolitan levels. For relevance, the latest 12-month period of available data from the Department of Labor (April 2025–March 2026) was used, and only the total requested workers for certified cases were considered in this analysis.
State and metropolitan totals may exceed the national total because certified labor cases can include worksites that span multiple jurisdictions. When a certified case includes work performed in more than one state or metropolitan area, all requested workers are attributed to each applicable jurisdiction. For example, if an employer requests 10 farmworkers to work at locations in both Los Angeles County and San Diego County, all 10 requested workers are counted in each metropolitan area. As a result, state, metropolitan, and national totals should not be compared directly.
For brevity, the term "seasonal labor" is used throughout this report to broadly describe temporary employment requested for one-time occurrences, seasonal needs, peak-load needs, or intermittent labor requirements under the H-2A and H-2B programs. References to metropolitan areas include both metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
For relevance, metropolitan and micropolitan areas were grouped into the following population cohorts:
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Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
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