73 pagesThere is persistent evidence of acute labor shortage across farms in the U.S. Because of difficulty in finding willing native workers, more farms are resorting to the H-2A program to hire foreign temporary agricultural workers. In this paper, we study how the H-2A program responds to local unemployment and wages. The results indicate that a decrease in unemployment rate and an increase in AEWR increases H-2A demand. This suggests that farmers only use the H-2A program as a last resort and that H-2A guest workers do not displace native workers.2023-10-1