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Implications for California
About 98% of the crop workers on California farms, and 58% of crop workers on farms outside California, were born abroad.
Table 1 shows that the share of foreign-born crop workers who are unauthorized, 68%, is similar in California and the rest of the United States; however, since 98% of California's crop workers are foreign-born, California has a higher-than-average share of unauthorized workers than most other states.
California crop workers had lower average hourly earnings and fewer days of farm work in the past year than crop workers outside California. U.S.-born workers earned more than foreign-born workers, but the premium for U.S.-born workers was almost $2 an hour in California and less than $1 an hour in the rest of the United States. A full-time worker employed 5 days a week for 50 weeks has 250 days of work; the average crop worker had almost 200 days of farm work in the year before being interviewed.