an area in which more desirable jobs drain away the labor. Workers may be housed, fed, transported, and worked in gangs with a minimum of thought given to their comfort.3

A crop guide gives a good indication of what is expected of the migrant worker on the job:

Beans: The picker must have the judgment to pick the mature beans and leave the younger beans for later picking. Crawling, crouching, stooping, walking, and kneeling are the physical demands.

Tomatoes: The picker *** works in a stooping position. Potatoes: The potato digger *** must exercise care not to leave potatoes in the rows. Works in a kneeling position and progresses along the rows by crawling * ** A good worker should pick from 75 to 150 field crates (60 pounds each) per day.

Number and Characteristics. Of the 3.1 million persons who during 1967 did farmwork for wages at any time, 276,000, or 9 percent, left their home county to do such work. These migratory workers were a small proportion of the total farm wage force in the United States, but they were a large proportion of the hired farmworkers employed on labor-intensive crops in areas were local labor was not available in the quantity demanded. (Table 1.)

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TABLE 1.-ESTIMATED EMPLOYMENT OF SEASONAL HIRED AGRICULTURAL WORKERS, BY TYPE OF WORKER, UNITED STATES, JANUARY-DECEMBER 1968

Type of worker

All types....... Total domestic..

[Thousands of workers]

Employment

Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 1

256.6 271.8 288.4 377.1 611.2 930.5 976.8 1,007.9 814.4 696.6 388.9 295.9 247.9 264.4 282.1 374.1 611.2 930.5 976.8 1,007.9 812.7 692.8 384.5 287.4

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Employment Security, in-season farm labor reports for the 15th of each month.

During the years since the end of World War II, the number of domestic migratory workers remained relatively stable, fluctuating around 400,000 until 1967. (Table 2.)

TABLE 2.-FARM WAGE WORK: NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED FOR ANY PERIOD DURING SPECIFIC YEARS, BY MIGRATORY AND NONMIGRATORY STATUS, SELECTED YEARS, 1949-67

Migratory workers differ little in age and sex from other hired farmworkers. They are a young work force; in 1967 half were under 25 years of age. A fourth were teenagers 14 through 17 years old. This is in contrast with the Nation's total work force, in which persons under 25 years of age accounted for only one-fifth of the 16- and 17year group for a mere 3 percent of the total. Only 38,000 people past the age of 54 continued doing farm wage work. Persons in this age group accounted for only 14 percent of all migratory workers in 1967,

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nearly the same proportion they comprised of the total work force (17 percent).

The migratory farm wage force of 1967 was predominantly male in all age groups. Only one-fourth of the migrants were female. Participation by women varied by age and was greatest for those between the ages of 25 to 54. Nearly half of all female migratory workers were in this age group (46.5 percent). Among workers aged 14 through 17, boys outnumbered girls three to one.

The large number of Spanish-speaking Americans performing migratory farmwork in the central and western areas of the United States, together with the English-speaking white migrants from the South, make the migratory work force predominantly white. The nonmigrant farmwork force is also predominantly white, but it contains a slightly larger proportion of nonwhites. Although nearly three-fourths of the nonwhite migratory workers lived in the South in 1967, they comprised only about a third of the migratory workers living in the South. Of the migrants whose permanent homes were elsewhere in the United States, less than 8 percent were nonwhite.

Mexican-American migrant farmworkers appear to stand out among all migrants because of their distinct cultural identity, regional concentration, notably poor living conditions, and the recent emergence of organizing efforts that have drawn the spotlight of national attention. Although the 3.5 million Americans with Spanish surnames constitute a relatively small proportion of the total population, they made up 12 percent of the State population in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Approximately 1.4 million MexicanAmericans live in California, and another 1.4 in Texas. Forty-six percent of the rural Mexican-Americans are employed as farm laborers, a large proportion of whom are migratory farmworkers. In 1960, 103,000 of the 261,000 Mexican-American farmworkers (about 40 percent) did some migrant farm wage work. Twenty-five percent of the 409,000 migrant farmworkers in 1960 were Mexican-Americans; they were 7 percent of over 3 million nonmigratory farmworkers."

Causes of Migration.-Migratory workers travel because of economic necessity. For some workers, the amount of farmwork available locally is limited; for others, migratory work is a way of obtaining higher wages. The latter is particularly true for farmworkers along the southern border of the United States, where wage rates are depressed by competing Mexican labor.

According to the latest report on mobility of the population published by the Bureau of the Census, male-hired farmworkers have the highest mobility rate of all civilian male wage and salary workers in major occupational groups. (Table 3.) About 25 percent of male wage and salary farmworkers lived in a different house in March 1966 than the house they lived in a year earlier. This percentage compares with mobility rates of around 20 for male wage and salary workers in white collar, manual, and service jobs. Also, the migration rate (based on workers who lived in a different county from that lived in a year earlier) was higher for hired farmworkers than for other major civilian occupational categories.

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TABLE 3.-MOBILITY RATES OF MALE WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS, MARCH 1966-MARCH 1967

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, series P-20, No. 171, "Mobility of the Population of the United States, March 1966March 1967."

Higher rates of mobility and migration stem, to a large extent, from characteristics of the hired-farmworker occupation. Among these are a: (1) seasonality of employment with associated nonfarm-tofarm and farm-to-farm moves. About 74 percent of the hired farmwork force lived in nonfarm places in December 1967, a month of low farmwork activities. Yet many of these workers have moved from a nonfarm place to a farm for a period of employment and have returned to a nonfarm place, but not necessarily to the same house or even the same city or town; (2) a high proportion (about 40 percent) of the workers have more than one employer in the year, involving farm-to farm moves in many cases; and (3) probably most important, however, is the significant proportion of workers who travel about the country while engaging in and looking for farmwork. Another factor that might be mentioned is the high proportion of workers who lived in rented or rent-free houses, from which moves can be made with relative ease.

Despite their travel, about two-fifths of both interstate and intrastate migrants did nonfarmwork during the year in addition to their farmwork.

Migratory Work Routes and Area of Residence.-Migratory farmworkers varied considerably in work routes followed, distances traveled, travel with children, work outside the home State, earnings, and other ways.

Although some migratory farmwork was done in almost every State, half of the total man-months of migratory worker employment in 1967 occurred in five States: California, Florida, Michigan, Texas, and Washington. (Table 4.) (See appendix A for the estimated population by State and county of migrant workers and family dependents.)

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TABLE 4.-ESTIMATED MAN-MONTHS OF MIGRATORY LABOR, BY STATE, UNITED STATES, 1968, AND CHANGE

1 Based on midmonth employment. The 1968 figures include preliminary data for the month of December. Note: Due to rounding, figures may not add to totals.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Employment Security.

In December 1965, 40 percent of the migratory workers were living in the geographic region extending from Texas east to the Atlantic Ocean and north through Maryland and Delaware. The remaining workers were about equally distributed in the northern and western regions of the United States. This geographic distribution represents a change from that prevailing only 4 years earlier when a larger proportion (60 percent) of the migrant workers lived in the South.

In contrast to the migratory worker, the person who did hired farmwork without temporarily changing his place of residence was more likely to live in the South and less likely to live in the West.

Migrants Active in Fruits and Vegetables.-Migratory farmworkers were active in every month of 1968 with employment levels of less than 40,000 in the winter, rising to a peak of 235,000 in Agat. Nearly 70 percent of the total 1,368,800 man-months of migratoryworker employment in 1968 was concentrated in the nine States shown in Table 4.

During the winter and early spring employment of migranta was confined largely to southem areas where the cultivation of cotton sugar beets, fruits, and vegetables was in progress and early fruits and vegetables were being harvested in May and June, when fruit rarvesting was beginning further north migrante moved to the Anato and Pacific coasts and fanned o from the South Centra ates After mmer fr... and

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