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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 228 / Wednesday, December 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
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Efficient Domestic Employer Surplus AEWR Domestic Employer Surplus Efficient Domestic Worker Surplus AEWR Domestic Worker Surplus AEWRU.S.DWL

Lo-Domestic Employers QAEWR_TOTAL QEFFICIENT_TOTAL

Labor Quantity
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b. Payroll and Other Transition Costs The proposed rule will result in new AEWR wage rates for some SOC code and geographic area combinations compared to the baseline. Companies employing H2A workers will need to update payrolls to account for the new AEWR wage rates. The Department does not quantify this cost and expects it to be de minimis because employers already need to update payrolls when AEWR wage rates are released annually.
Therefore, they already have the capabilities and processes to quickly, and at de minimis cost, update payrolls when AEWR wage rates change.
The proposed rule may also result in other transition costs to some employers for recruitment and training if they hire U.S. workers for the jobs that are performed by H2A workers. The Department is not able to quantify the transition costs and seeks public input on the potential transition expenses such as recruitment and training.
Transfers The following section describes the transfers of the proposed rule related to the revisions to the wage structure. The Department considers transfers as payments from one group to another that do not affect total resources available to society. The transfers measured in this analysis are wage
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transfers from U.S. employers to H2A
workers. H2A workers are migrant workers who will spend some of their earnings on consumption goods in the U.S. economy but likely send a large fraction of their earnings to their home countries.86 Therefore, the Department considers the wage transfers in the analysis as transfer payments within the global economic system.
Section 218a1 of the INA, 8 U.S.C.
1188a1, provides that an H2A
worker is admissible only if the Secretary of Labor determines that there are not sufficient workers who are able, willing, and qualified, and who will be available at the time and place 86 Walmsley, Winters, and Ahmed report the remittances to labor income for migrants from Mexico the primary source of H2A workers at nearly 20%. The ratio ranges from close to 5% for migrants from China to close to 70% for migrants from India. These remittances can provide substantial financial assistance for migrant workers families in their home countries. Terrie L.
Walmsley et al., Global Trade Analysis Project, Measuring the Impact of the Movement of Labor Using a Model of Bilateral Migration Flows Nov.
2007, available at https www.gtap.
agecon.purdue.edu/resources/download/4635.pdf.
See also Dilip Ratha, Remittances: Funds for the Folks Back Home, International Monetary Fund, https www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/
remitt.htm last updated Feb. 24, 2020; Daniel Costa & Philip Martin, Economic Policy Institute, Temporary Labor Migration Programs Aug. 1, 2018, available at https www.epi.org/publication/
temporary-labor-migration-programs-governancemigrant-worker-rights-and-recommendations-forthe-u-n-global-compact-for-migration/.

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needed, to perform the labor or services involved in the petition, and the employment of the alien in such labor or services will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed. In 20 CFR 655.120a, the Department currently meets this statutory requirement, in part, by requiring the employer to offer, advertise in its recruitment, and pay a wage that is the highest of the AEWR, the prevailing wage, the agreed-upon collective bargaining wage, the Federal minimum wage, or the State minimum wage. As discussed below, the Departments proposed rule maintains this general wage-setting structure but proposes to modify the methodology by which it establishes the AEWRs.
Currently, pursuant to the 2010 Final Rule, the AEWR for each State or region is published annually as a single average hourly gross wage that is set using the field and livestock workers combined data from the FLS, which is conducted by the USDAs NASS. This methodology produces a single AEWR
for all agricultural workers in a State or region, without regard to occupational classification, and no AEWR in geographic areas not surveyed by NASS
e.g., Alaska. As discussed in depth in the preamble, the Department is concerned that this methodology may have an adverse effect on the wages of
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Figure 4: Under the baseline the wage set at AEWRa-sE allows for the legal hiring of foreign workers below a U.S.-only labor market equilibrium wage rate WuS-ONLY. Vith a large supply of foreign workers willing to work at the AEVRBASE wage rate the number of U.S.
workers willing to work at that wage rate is QB.-SE This results in the AEWR Domestic Worker Surplus, the AEVR Domestic Employer Surplus, and the AEWR U.S. DWL.