Sponsors (10)
The bill raises and more systematically ties H-2A wages (including a housing-based adjustment) to clear metrics—benefiting skilled temporary farmworkers and giving employers predictable rules—while increasing labor costs for small farms, adding administrative complexity, and risking undercompensation in high-rent areas.
H-2A skilled (Skill Level II) workers: raises pay for experienced or formally trained agricultural labor, increasing wages for more skilled temporary farmworkers.
H-2A workers and their employers: recognizes employer-provided housing by converting HUD four-bedroom fair market rents into an hourly wage adjustment, formally compensating housing value in pay calculations.
Small farms and employers: creates a predictable, annually updated, metric-based wage-setting method (skill tiers + HUD rents) that improves planning certainty for payroll and budgeting.
Small farms and employers: increases labor costs by requiring higher wages for Skill Level II workers plus the housing-derived wage adjustment, raising overall payroll expenses.
H-2A workers in high-rent states and the communities that employ them: the 30% cap on the housing adjustment can undercompensate workers where actual housing costs exceed the capped amount, leaving housing value only partially recognized.
Employers and workers: potential disputes over skill-level classification could delay visa certifications or create contentious classification disputes, disrupting hiring and work schedules.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires DOL to set a two‑tier H‑2A wage schedule and to add an annual state housing‑value adjustment based on HUD 4‑bedroom rents, capped at 30% of the wage.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Theodore Paul Budd · Last progress March 26, 2026
Requires the Department of Labor to use a two-tier wage schedule when it sets a required minimum wage for H‑2A agricultural workers that differs from federal or state minimums: an entry-level rate (Skill Level I) and a higher experienced/trained rate (Skill Level II). It also requires DOL to annually convert the value of employer‑provided housing into an hourly compensation adjustment using each State's weighted average HUD fair market rent for a 4‑bedroom unit, and to include that adjustment (capped at 30% of the applicable wage) when determining the required wage. The change creates new, specific procedures for how the DOL calculates H‑2A wage rates, adds an annual housing‑value calculation by state, and places a 30% cap on how much housing value can count toward the required wage. No new funding or effective date is specified in the text provided.