evidence: Employers in the H-2A program must demonstrate, and the U.S. Department of Labor must certify, that efforts to recruit U.S. workers were not successful. Employers must also pay a State-specific minimum wage, which may not be lower than the average wage for crop and livestock workers surveyed in the FLS in that region in the prior year, known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR). (See the next section for details on the AEWR.) In addition, employers must provide housing for their H-2A workers and pay for their domestic and international transportation. [...] The Farm Labor Survey (FLS) conducted by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is based on semi-annual phone interviews with a random sample of farm employers (crops and livestock) who are asked to provide quarterly data on their wage bill, employment counts, and average weekly hours for all hired workers, by occupation. Contract labor is excluded, and no demographic information on the workforce is collected. Each year, the FLS's estimate of the annual average wage for nonsupervisory field and livestock workers in each of 18 regions is used as the basis for the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which sets a minimum wage for H-2A workers in the following year. The survey is described here, and its quarterly reports are archived here. Data and statistics can also be obtained via NASS Quick Stats.