Abstract:
The issues of farm labor unionization, with its accompanying wage
demands, and of raising the agricultural wage rate through legislative action,
continue to receive increasing nationwide attention. However, much
of the policy for dealing with this sector was formulated at a time when
the wage-employment response was significantly different than it is today.
There is evidence that one state, Oregon, has shifted from an inelastic
hired farm labor market to an elastic market, and that the nationwide
market is undergoing a similar shift at the present time.
This bulletin uses traditional time-series hired farm labor models to
examine the U.S. market and the Oregon market. Various estimation
problems and a hypothesis about the future behavior of elasticity in this
sector are discussed.
