FY2024 H-2A Certifications: Five States Accounted for About Half of Positions

What the reporting period measures

The supplied Department of Labor report covers fiscal year 2024 and identifies its data as current through September 30, 2024. That is a reporting cutoff, not a verified publication date. October 20, 2026, is this article’s editorial date; the source’s publication date remains unverified.

Employers requested 391,590 positions, and 384,900 positions were certified. Separately, the report lists 22,623 applications processed, including 22,174 certified, 158 denied, and 291 withdrawn. Applications and positions are different measures and should not be treated as interchangeable counts.

Most importantly, certified positions are not unique workers, visas issued, or completed hires. The figures describe certification activity, not how many people ultimately arrived or worked. The report also cautions that figures are rounded and calculated from employer-submitted processing data.

State concentration: Florida leads a substantial top five

Florida recorded 47,416 certified positions, or 12.3% of the national total. Georgia followed with 43,436 and 11.3%, California with 37,511 and 9.7%, Washington with 35,884 and 9.3%, and North Carolina with 27,532 and 7.2%. Together, these five states accounted for 191,779 positions—approximately 49.8% of the national count, calculated from the listed totals.

The next five states were Michigan, with 15,015 positions; Louisiana, 14,036; Texas, 13,710; Arizona, 12,800; and New York, 10,294. Across all ten listed states, certified positions totaled 257,634, approximately 66.9% of the national figure.

These rankings measure the location of certified employment positions. They do not establish which states had the greatest agricultural labor shortages, the highest hiring success, or the largest overall agricultural workforces. The supplied statistics do not provide those comparison measures.

Occupations: Crop labor dominates, but the tables do not intersect

Farmworkers and laborers in crop, nursery, and greenhouse work accounted for 319,565 certified positions, or 83.0%. Agricultural equipment operators followed with 31,852 positions and 8.3%; farm, ranch, and aquacultural animal workers accounted for 18,042 and 4.7%. Combined, these three categories represented approximately 96.0% of certified positions.

Smaller listed categories included heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, with 5,616 positions, and construction laborers, with 2,328. Shuttle drivers and chauffeurs, graders and sorters, helpers, packers and packagers, and first-line supervisors each accounted for 0.5% or less of the reported total.

The state and occupation rankings are separate national summaries, not a state-by-occupation cross-tabulation. Consequently, the report cannot establish how many Florida certifications involved crop labor, or how equipment-operator positions were distributed among states. Applying national occupation shares to individual states would produce estimates, not reported findings.

Practical conclusion: Use the rankings as a research starting point

For labor-market research, these figures identify where FY2024 certifications were concentrated and which occupations dominated nationally. Use them to prioritize further investigation, while seeking state-by-occupation records and separate evidence of actual employment before drawing hiring conclusions. They are not evidence of current vacancies or guarantees of jobs or visas. Current October 2026 legal status is not verified by this retrospective.