---
title: "Farm Labor Contractor"
description: "Recruit and hire seasonal or temporary agricultural laborers. May transport, house, and provide meals for workers."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/farm-labor-contractor"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Farm Labor Contractor

**Category:** Business and Financial Operations · **SOC code:** 13-1074 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 13-1074.00

Recruit and hire seasonal or temporary agricultural laborers. May transport, house, and provide meals for workers.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $58,460 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $28.11/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $30,930 to $84,050, with the middle half between $35,720 and $79,590
- **Total US employment:** 310
- **Typical entry education:** No formal credential
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +7.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 52/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 310 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $30,930 |
| 25th | $35,720 |
| 50th (median) | $58,460 |
| 75th | $79,590 |
| 90th | $84,050 |
| Mean (average) | $58,470 |

### Pay by state

The 3 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $85,710 | $77,411 | Not published by BLS |
| FL | $79,590 | $76,963 | Not published by BLS |
| MN | $50,730 | $51,439 | Not published by BLS |

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 1,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 2,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 100 jobs, or +7.4%. Much faster than average: 7.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** No formal educational credential (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

## What the work involves

- Recruit and hire agricultural workers.
- Provide food, drinking water, and field sanitation facilities to contracted workers.
- Supervise the work of contracted employees.
- Furnish tools for employee use.
- Employ foremen to deal directly with workers when recruiting, hiring, instructing, assigning tasks, and enforcing work rules.
- Pay wages of contracted farm laborers.
- Direct and transport workers to appropriate work sites.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Administration and Management — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Food Production — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Economics and Accounting — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Foreign Language — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 4.99 |
| R — Realistic | 4.85 |
| C — Conventional | 4.39 |
| S — Social | 3.24 |
| I — Investigative | 1.54 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 88.0 |
| ESFJ | 80.9 |
| ISTJ | 74.5 |
| ISFJ | 73.0 |
| ESTP | 65.3 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [First-Line Supervisor of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers) — median $59,320
- [Farmer or Agricultural Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/farmer-or-agricultural-manager) — median $89,900
- [First-Line Supervisor of Material-Moving Machine and Vehicle Operators](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-material-moving-machine-and-vehicle-operators) — median $62,840
- [First-Line Supervisor of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-landscaping-lawn-service-and-groundskeeping-workers) — median $58,430
- [Buyer and Purchasing Agent, Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/buyer-and-purchasing-agent-farm-products) — median $77,710
- [General and Operations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-and-operations-manager) — median $105,770
- [First-Line Supervisor of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-helpers-laborers-and-material-movers-hand) — median $62,840
- [First-Line Supervisor of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-housekeeping-and-janitorial-workers) — median $49,100
- [Agricultural Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-inspector) — median $49,940
- [First-Line Supervisor of Production and Operating Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-production-and-operating-workers) — median $74,450

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

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