H-2A Agricultural Labor Certifications

Limitaciones

Federal fiscal years (October 1 - September 30), not calendar years: `year` is the fiscal year in which DOL's Office of Foreign Labor Certification issued its final determination on the application (the decision date), the basis DOL itself reports on. Georgia's statewide positions certified match DOL's published H-2A Selected Statistics ('positions certified' by state of employment) exactly in every year, FY2020-FY2026. FY2026 is PARTIAL: it holds decisions through June 30, 2026 only (DOL's cumulative Q3 file) and will be replaced when DOL posts the full year; do not compare it with complete years. No decision is dated before October 31, 2025 nationally or November 3, 2025 in Georgia, so October 2025 is all but empty - a gap that falls within the October 1 - November 12, 2025 federal government shutdown. Positions certified are job slots DOL approved for temporary foreign agricultural workers, not workers admitted or visas issued: the employer must still petition USCIS and each worker must obtain a visa, and fewer may arrive. Each fiscal year counts the determinations issued in it, so an application re-determined in a later year (for example certified, then withdrawn) appears in both years, as in DOL's own figures. Withdrawn and denied applications certify no positions (DOL leaves the count blank, counted 0 here); the one exception, a FY2022 withdrawn application with 1 certified position, is kept because DOL's total includes it. DOL certified 4 Georgia applications for more positions than they requested (likely amended after filing); they are kept as published, so certified can exceed requested in a small cell. Geography is the application's FIRST worksite (its worksite state, county and ZIP). About half of H-2A job orders list further places of employment, which may lie in other counties or states; those additional sites are not used, so each application is counted once, where its first worksite is, and an application whose first worksite is outside Georgia is not counted even if it also lists Georgia farms. Employer, agent and attorney addresses are never used. Worksite counties are checked against the worksite street address. The Census Bureau's geocoder located the Georgia worksite addresses in 2020 Census geography and matched 2,408 applications (50%) to the same street address (house number and street, or intersection) in the same ZIP code. For 2,241 of them the address lies in DOL's county. For 98 applications (7,447 positions certified; FY2020 12, FY2021 25, FY2022 5, FY2023 10, FY2024 17, FY2025 8, FY2026 21) it lies in another county and a second sign agrees DOL's county is wrong - DOL's county holds under 5% of the worksite ZIP's residents, or the address lies at least 500 m from DOL's county, too far for a small placement error to explain - so the address's county is used. It also gives a county to 58 applications DOL left blank (2,599 positions certified). For 11 applications (466 positions certified) the address points to another county but lies within 500 m of DOL's county, where a geocoder can err, and DOL's county holds at least 5% of the ZIP's residents, so DOL's county is kept; some are DOL errors and some geocoder errors, and the geocoder alone cannot tell which. 9 applications (53 positions certified) at addresses where county tax or property records contradict the geocoder are set aside, so DOL's county stands. Where the address could not settle it, DOL's own worksite county is sometimes impossible for the worksite ZIP code - none of the ZIP's 2020 population lives in it (Appling, the first county on DOL's list, on worksites across the state, such as Moultrie; or a city typed as the county, such as Newton for Newton in Baker County). Such a county is replaced only when the right one is certain: at least 99% of the ZIP's population lives in one other county, and the worksite city is the ZIP's postal name or a Census place in that county, and not also a place or postal name in the stated county. 14 Georgia applications (1,620 positions certified) were moved to the ZIP's county this way (FY2020 1, FY2021 3, FY2022 3, FY2023 3, FY2024 2, FY2025 1, FY2026 1); they sit in 9 ZIP codes, 8 wholly inside the new county and 1 at least 99% inside it. Another 66 applications (5,231 positions certified) keep a stated county that is impossible for their ZIP, because the evidence falls short of certain: in 26 the ZIP straddles a county line, in 38 the city does not match the ZIP (the ZIP itself may be mistyped) and in 2 the city lies on both sides of the county line. Their county may be wrong. 4 of them, with 377 positions certified, name Appling and stay in Appling County's rows. In FY2025, DOL left the worksite county blank on 132 Georgia applications (6,415 positions certified), all decided July 17, 2025 - September 30, 2025 (nationally, every blank worksite county is on a decision dated July 8, 2025 or later). 58 of them (2,599 positions) are placed by their street address (above); the other 73 (3,717 positions) are placed in the county holding most of the population of their worksite ZIP code (2020 Census); 44 of them sit in ZIP codes that straddle a county line (dominant share as low as 45%), so the worksite may be in the neighboring county. Where DOL does name the county (as corrected above), the ZIP's dominant county disagrees with it on 348 of the 4,605 Georgia applications whose ZIP is in the crosswalk (7.6%; 319 of the disagreements are in straddling ZIPs), so expect roughly that share of the recovered applications to sit in a neighboring county. One FY2025 application (99 positions certified, worksite ZIP 30472, Uvalda) has a ZIP absent from the crosswalk and no county: it counts in the state row only, so that year's county rows sum to 99 fewer positions certified (and 99 fewer requested, 1 fewer application) than the state row. In every other year county rows sum exactly to the state row. DOL's FY2020/FY2021 files repeat 6 case numbers (none with a Georgia worksite); the latest determination is kept. `case_status` is the final determination; certifications marked '(Expired)' - their validity period had passed when DOL compiled the file - count as certified or partially certified. `soc_occupation` names the five occupations (SOC codes) with the most Georgia positions certified over FY2020-FY2026 and groups every other occupation as 'other'. `labor_contractor` is whether the employer filed as an H-2A labor contractor; 'unknown' is the 18 FY2020 applications that left the field blank. County rows are totals only (every categorical 'all'); the breakdowns are statewide. No suppression: rows are applications (job orders), not people, so the domain's county small-cell rule does not apply, small county counts are published, and every zero is a real zero. Wages, worker housing and employer identity are not published here.