William Edwards, Extension Farm Management Specialist at Iowa State, completed a survey of Iowa farms about wages and benefits. Here is the link for the full report:
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c1-60.html
“More than 20,000 people make their living each year as full-time employees on Iowa farms. The level and type of wages and benefits they receive vary widely. Both farmers and employees want to be informed about how farm labor is compensated. To assist them, Iowa State University and the USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Iowa Field Office conducted a survey of Iowa farmers who employ one or more persons full-time.”
The results “describe 168 farm employees who worked at least 1,600 hours on the same farm in 2005, and were not related to the farm operator. Five percent of the employees sampled were female, and only 1 percent were born outside of the United States. The average employee had 15 years of experience working on a farm, 9 of which were with the present employer.”
“Most employers and employees think first about cash wages or salary. Based on the information obtained in the survey, the average cash wage paid to all employees was $28,256 per year, before deductions for taxes. However, this amount made up only 81 percent of their total compensation (Figure 1). Besides wages, employees also received compensation in the form of fringe benefits and bonuses. The average value of all benefits received was $5,374 per employee. In addition, an average of $1,010 was paid to each employee as a cash bonus or incentive payment. The average value of all forms of compensation was $34,640, and varied from a low of $12,920 to a high of $70,300.” This average represented a 3.3% annual increase since 1997.
Ohio Farm Report , including Corn Belt Labor information, may be found at the Ohio Ag Statistics web site:
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Ohio/Publications/Farm_Report_Releases/SM0406.pdf