Model-Based Estimates for Farm Labor Quantities

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts the Farm Labor Survey to produce estimates number workers, duration workweek, and wage rates for all agricultural workers. Traditionally, expert opinion is used integrate auxiliary information, such as previous year’s estimates, with survey’s direct estimates. Alternatively, implementing small area models integrating survey additional sources information provides more reliable official valid measures uncertainty each type estimate. In this paper, several hierarchical Bayesian subarea-level are developed in support different interest Survey. A 2020 case study illustrates improvement areas sample sizes by using borrowing across subareas. resulting framework a complete set coherent required geographic levels. These methods were incorporated into publication first time 2020.