By Virginia Nigh
American Farm Bureau Senior Economist
The Department of Labor recently released full fiscal year usage data for the H-2A program. Given agriculture’s ongoing struggle to recruit domestic workers and a very tight U.S. labor market overall, it should be no surprise that H-2A program usage reached new highs again in fiscal year 2023 (October 2022-September 2023), though the rate of growth was down considerably from last year.