Federal laws require that any worker be paid at least the minimum wage per hour of employment.
While minimum wage laws establish a floor for hourly earnings, piece rate hourly earnings are typically much higher since the worker's earnings are tied directly to individual productivity. Seasonal farm workers are organized into crews, and employers keep daily accounting records of crew performance. For harvesting crews who work by the piece rate, daily records include the size of the crew, total hours of harvesting, volume harvested, and dollars earned from harvesting. From these data, one can calculate average worker productivity, effective hourly wage and daily harvest income. The purpose of this article is to summarize the harvest performance of crews from which data were obtained.