Who Makes Up Your Labor Force?

This is really interesting. The Ohio State University Department of Horticulture and Crop Science conducted a study of 1,548 nursery employees to characterize the labor force. You can find the whole story here, but there are a few bullet points that caught my eye:

• 70 percent of the industry's labor force is Spanish-speaking or hispanic origin and over half are from Mexico.
  
• 22 percent of workers understand English
• Workers with high English proficiency held advanced jobs
• More than 75 percent are earning between $6 and $10 per hour, while the average hourly earning of non-supervisory workers during 2007 is $17.16

The states surveyed included Ohio, Michigan, Delaware, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona and Rhode Island. Getting this data really required a lot of trust, so thumbs up to OSU Extension specialist Hannah Mathers, who led the study. This is important information and I'm not sure anyone else has been able to gather it until this study.