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May 1, 2025

By Ross Courtney, Good Fruit Grower

Industry contraction makes domestic labor pool seem bigger.

For the first time in decades, tree fruit growers in the Northwest are finding it easier to hire domestic workers.

Occasionally more than they need.

“It started around May 2024. It was just more overflow, more people, more workers available,” said Lupe Muñoz, an area manager for River Valley Fruit in Washington’s Yakima Valley. “And this year, when I started my pruning season, it was even better. I probably hired about half the people that called looking for work.” 

The apparent abundance of workers signals a sluggish agricultural economy, not more labor.

Across Washington, specialty crop farms have pulled out acreage of wine grapes, tree fruit and hops, or implemented smaller ways to scale back on staffing, leaving would-be workers with fewer places to apply. For example, in one Gala block near Prosser, Washington, Muñoz instructed workers to train branches vertically instead of bending them to line up with trellis wires, a time-consuming task they would have done in prior years. 

On the opposite side of the equation, ag companies in the Northwest are relying less on an H-2A program that becomes more expensive every year.

“We’re seeing we have more local labor, local help,” said Cesar Ortiz, an orchard manager for White Alpha Orchard in Ephrata, Washington. He estimated an increase of roughly 40 percent for local applicants in 2024 and was seeing the same as of March this year.

Ortiz’s company, AgriMACS, manages orchards throughout Central Washington, from the Canadian border to the Oregon border, on behalf of investor owners. Companywide, the properties began noticing an uptick in local applicants starting in 2023, said Vice President Mark Stennes, and some have reduced their H-2A contracts.

A slowdown in construction also contributes to what seems like a more ample worker pool. 

“I think we’re actually bringing people back from the trades,” Stennes said.

He expects the blip to be short-lived, though. 

“H-2A is obviously here to stay, and I think it’s going to be the foundation of our labor source for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Indirect statistics

Statistics show the trend … sort of.

Since 2021, Washington’s WorkSource, a labor exchange and job training network operated in part by the state Employment Security Department, has more than tripled its agricultural referrals to H-2A clearance orders. In other words: The agency has placed qualified domestic workers in jobs for which employers apply for help through the H-2A program. A core federal stipulation of H-2A is that qualified domestic workers get jobs before foreign visa workers.

“There does seem to be more interest from local workers for these jobs,” said Craig Carroll, business operations manager for the state Workforce Services Division. 

One caveat: Most local workers apply directly at farms, not at state WorkSource offices. 

H-2A statistics mark a downward trend, a stark contrast to years of skyrocketing increases. 

From 2013 through 2023, the number of H-2A workers certified for Washington employers more than tripled, according to state data. Federal statistics show similarly dramatic increases in California, Michigan and New York, all among the largest H-2A users.

Things started to slow last year, however. 

In Washington, H-2A certifications — the number of foreign workers approved by state and federal authorities — dropped by 1 percent in 2024 and another 8 percent in the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1.

Employers and regulators have improved their practices in regard to balancing guestworker and domestic recruitment, said Bertha Clayton, director of the ESD’s Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce Service — an office created by the state Legislature in 2019 to help keep up with the rising H-2A demand. Growers are better at offering those jobs, while the state agency is better at policing the program.

“Employers are just more tuned-in to domestic recruitment,” Clayton said.

The surge in H-2A employment over the past decade makes farm work more attractive for locals. California, Washington and Oregon have among the highest Adverse Effect Wage Rates, the regionalized and federally mandated minimum wages for farms that use H-2A labor. What farms pay H-2A workers, they must pay domestic workers — and those workers could be drawn from other states as those base wages near $20 an hour. 

Simple economics

Simple economics explain most of the trends, said Enrique Gastelum, executive director of WAFLA, an ag employer nonprofit that facilitates most of the H-2A applications in Oregon and Washington.

One of the organization’s large, Central Washington tree fruit clients has ripped out 10 of its job sites, while a few smaller Oregon clients are dialing back their H-2A orders.

“The small guys are saying: ‘I can’t afford this H-2A anymore,’” he said.

Blips in the labor pool have happened before, said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League, a Yakima-based agricultural human resources nonprofit, and the trend has always swung back to H-2A. 

That will happen again, especially with the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement, he said. Some employers may start using E-Verify.

“The long-term trend is for more H-2A in every respect,” Gempler said.

Kennewick, Washington-area grower Shawn Gay has been finding ample domestic workers for the rush of harvest, and he expects that trend to continue this year. A nearby vineyard recently went from 1,200 acres to about 400.

“There are not more people in the pool; there’s a lot of acres of grapes being pulled out,” he said.

At the same time, he has applied for 30 H-2A employees this year, about half of his level just two years ago.

The two trends are only partly connected. He has simplified his training systems and is using platforms more to cut back on labor, no matter where the workers come from.

“We’re trying to figure out how to reduce the number of people on the farm,” he said.