Crop Farmworker
Structural exposure score derived from 2 independent sources (OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" (human_rating_beta) + AIOE (Felten, Raj & Seamans)), each normalized against its own full reference population and combined by simple average, then converted to a percentile.
We have not ingested real-world usage data for this occupation yet. We show a band only where genuine data exists, rather than estimate one.
What a crop farmworker actually does
Crop farmworkers plant, tend, and hand-harvest crops on farms, in orchards, and in nurseries and greenhouses, work that varies constantly with the specific crop, growth stage, and weather conditions on a given day. Core tasks include hand-planting and hand-harvesting fruits, vegetables, and other crops that machines can't reliably pick without bruising or missing ripe produce, maintaining irrigation systems, applying fertilizers and pesticides, repairing farm equipment, and grading and sorting harvested products by hand.
In nursery and greenhouse settings, workers also manage climate control systems and maintain plant inventory, and experienced workers often direct seasonal laborers during peak harvest periods.
Most crop farmworkers are employed directly by farm operations, though many work through agricultural labor contractors during seasonal harvest peaks, moving from farm to farm as different crops come into season across the year. The role requires no formal education, with skills learned entirely on the job, and remains one of the largest agricultural occupations in the country by headcount, with roughly half a million people currently working in it nationwide.
Why it reads this way
Crop Farmworker scores 91/100 on this site's structural exposure measure, one of the highest readings on the entire site, reflecting how far hand-planting, hand-harvesting, and physical field labor sits from anything a language model touches. This site checked the robotics side of that protection carefully rather than accepting the raw score at face value, since agricultural harvesting is exactly the kind of physical work that could plausibly hide a real automation blind spot.
What the check found is a genuinely mixed but ultimately reassuring picture. Robotic harvesting for delicate crops like strawberries is real, not hypothetical, with pilots from companies like Harvest CROO already running in Florida and California, and AI harvesting robots are projected to increase picking rates up to 40% on large-scale farms by 2026.
But this remains pilot-stage deployment for select crops, not commercial-scale replacement of the broader hand-harvest workforce, and other crops have proven far harder to automate: lettuce harvesting in particular has stayed "stubbornly robot-resistant" due to the plant's fragile nature and low growth close to the ground.
The honest, current driver of this occupation's real employment decline is a documented labor shortage, not automation: Washington state alone saw a 23% drop in farmworkers and a 37% drop in migrant labor between 2017 and 2022, with roughly 3,700 farms closing over the same period citing worker shortages as a major factor.
Robotic harvesting is being developed explicitly to ease that labor crunch, not to displace an adequately staffed workforce, and BLS's own data shows real, continuing demand: roughly 71,700 openings projected over the decade, driven by the occupation's inherently high seasonal turnover.
Skills this role draws on
We don't yet have task-by-task time-share data for this occupation, so we can't show which specific tasks carry the exposure score above. This is the real skill set instead.
Typical salary range (USD)
$32,900–$45,690
Average: $35,660/yr
Range source: BLS OEWS wage data via O*NET OnLine (2025 release), SOC 45-2092.00 'Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse'
Average source: BLS OEWS wage data for Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse (45-2092.00) via O*NET OnLine, 2025 wage data (Annual Median Wage)
Related careers
Head-to-head comparisons
Crop Farmworker scores 91/100 (Medium structural confidence, both pillars cover this code), one of the highest readings on the site. The mandatory §2a robotics-materiality check found a genuinely mixed but reassuring picture: robotic harvesting for delicate crops like strawberries is real (Harvest CROO pilots in Florida and California, AI systems projected to raise picking rates up to 40% by 2026), but remains pilot-stage for select crops, not commercial-scale replacement, and other crops like lettuce have stayed "stubbornly robot-resistant." The occupation's real employment decline traces to a documented labor shortage, not automation: Washington state alone saw a 23% farmworker decline and 37% migrant-labor decline (2017-2022), with ~3,700 farms closing citing worker shortages. Robotic harvesting is being developed to ease that shortage, not displace an adequately staffed workforce, and BLS shows real continuing demand (~71,700 openings over the decade from high seasonal turnover), as of 2026-09-21.
This is a researched judgment (checklist v1.2), not a statistical measurement — it sits alongside, not instead of, the structural exposure signal above. Next scheduled review: 2027-03-21.
Sources (5)
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/45-2092.00
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/localwages/45-2092.00
- https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2025/09/18/robotic-strawberry-harvester/
- https://news.wsu.edu/news/2026/02/05/automating-the-harvest-wsu-works-to-ease-labor-shortages-on-the-farm/
- https://builtin.com/robotics/farming-agricultural-robots
Data sources & methodology
Salary data: BLS OEWS wage data via O*NET OnLine (2025 release), SOC 45-2092.00 'Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse'. Min/max figures represent the 10th–90th percentile annual wage range across the United States. Average figure sourced separately: BLS OEWS wage data for Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse (45-2092.00) via O*NET OnLine, 2025 wage data (Annual Median Wage).
Automation Risk Score: Based on O*NET occupational analysis (45-2092.00) evaluating task complexity, physical requirements, social intelligence, and environmental variability. Methodology based on research from Frey & Osborne (Oxford, 2017).
Growth projections: Decline (-1% or lower, 2024-2034) per O*NET, but ~71,700 projected openings driven by very high turnover, and the decline is documented as reflecting a genuine farm labor shortage (a 23% farmworker decline and 37% migrant-labor decline in Washington state alone, 2017-2022) rather than automation-driven displacement (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook / O*NET Job Outlook), based on BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.