Occupation / job
Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A median of $35,660 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse 29% behind — $14,360 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
This is a large occupation: 265,500 people work as Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
Agricultural work suits people who accept weather, season and commodity prices as the terms of employment rather than as bad luck.
No verified preparation time is on file for Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $34,320 at the bottom quarter to $38,840 at the top is $376 a month — a 1.1x ratio, which is about as compressed as this dataset gets. Doing Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse unusually well is worth strikingly little in cash.
The bottom quarter is under $34,320, $15,700 short of the $50,020 typical American job. The question worth answering before entering Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse is how long people spend in that quarter, because the median says nothing about it.
Avoid it if seasonal income and weather-dependent work would destabilise your household budget.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 265,500 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.1x ratio between the quarters of Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse is about as compressed as federal wage data gets. Pay that flat is set by a schedule — a union grade, a public band, a licence tier — and individual negotiation moves it very little off $35,660.
In cash terms the middle half of Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse runs $34,320 to $38,840 — $4,520 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $35,660.
Between $34,320 and $38,840 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $35,660. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $3,180; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $4,520.
The upper half of the middle range — $35,660 to $38,840, or $3,180 — is far longer than the lower half at $1,340. In a shape like this an average would flatter Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $17.14 at the midpoint for Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse, $16.50 at the 25th percentile and $18.67 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $35,660 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse, the hourly figure is $35,660 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else