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The Labor Department has changed its H-2A labor supply states for two farm states, adding Texas to the places where Michigan growers’ job orders must circulate and dropping South Dakota from North Dakota’s list. The update, posted Nov. 2 by the department’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC), affects every Michigan and North Dakota employer that files for H-2A guest workers, and it lands as most of the 2027 season’s applications are about to arrive.
Labor supply states are the additional states where a farm employer’s H-2A job order is sent out through state workforce agencies, so that U.S. workers there hear about the openings before foreign workers are certified. OFLC sets them once a year under 20 CFR 655.154(d), a process created by the 2022 H-2A final rule. After the change, Michigan’s list reads Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Puerto Rico and Texas. North Dakota’s shrinks to a single state, Montana. The department’s chart does not explain either decision.
What H-2A labor supply states require of Michigan growers
For most employers, the change is less work than it might sound. Under the framework DOL described when it set up the annual process, a labor supply state is where the job order “will be circulated and, if appropriate, where additional positive recruitment may be required.” The current chart lists “None” under additional employer recruitment for every state. The practical effect is that Texas’s workforce agency will now carry Michigan job orders, and any qualified U.S. worker it refers has to be considered under the same rules as a local applicant. That exposure is what matters: a referral from Texas who applies and is qualified is a worker the grower must deal with before relying on H-2A labor.
The scale is meaningful. Michigan employers were certified for 14,694 H-2A positions from October 2025 through June 2026, 4.2 percent of the national total of 349,867, according to OFLC’s selected statistics for that period. Texas ranked just ahead at 15,278. Timing matters too: of the 20,695 H-2A applications OFLC received in that span, 17,174, or about 83 percent, came in between October and March, a calculation from the same OFLC figures. Growers filing for spring planting and summer fruit will be among the first to see Texas on their recruitment instructions.
Texas was already the most common labor supply state in the country. Based on DOL’s chart, it now appears on the lists of 17 filing states, from Arkansas and Colorado to Wisconsin, more than any other state or territory. That fits the department’s stated goal of using recruitment flow data to steer job orders toward places where U.S. farmworkers are actually found, and Texas has long been a home base for workers who follow harvests north.
The determination stays in force until OFLC publishes a new one, so this list will likely govern Michigan and North Dakota filings for the full 2027 season. It is one piece of a broader push by the department to tighten labor market tests, alongside a PERM proposed rule that cleared White House review on Oct. 23 and an H-2A wage rule a federal court ordered replaced by Dec. 30. For growers, the open question is less the Texas listing itself than what pay rates those Texas referrals will be offered once the new wage formula arrives. The shift also comes as labor force growth stalls with lower immigration, which raises the stakes of every recruitment channel employers are told to use.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, H-2A Labor Supply State Determinations (updated Nov. 2, 2026); DOL OFLC, announcement on the annual determination of labor supply states process, May 22, 2025; DOL OFLC, H-2A Selected Statistics, FY2026 Q3 (data as of June 30, 2026); OIRA, conclusion of review of DOL PERM proposed rule, RIN 1205-AC29, Oct. 23, 2026.
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