Farmworkers would be a good example. Some figures are necessary:
- The US Federal Poverty line is $12,140 for a single person and $16,460 for a two person household.
- Farmworkers make 7.95 per hour on average or 15,264 per year.
There is already quite an issue here since a two person household needs to have an income of $16,460, which is definitely not great since that means that single parents have to raise a kid on that income which is extremely hard if you consider the medical, clothing, education, entertainment, nutrition, transportation and other expenses a regular person needs, imagine adding a child to those expense on such a small salary. No wonder most low wage employees rely on federal public assistance to just be able to eat and get some very basic medical care. So farm workers really get paid very little for a very difficult job, most of the times by a multinational corporation that could definitely afford to pay them much more.
In light of this, it is no wonder most Americans prefer not to work on these jobs since they pay starvation wages. And this is where productivity, the law of supply and demand, and international competition and technology affect wages for this job. Since companies will always prefer employees that are more productive while at the same time they earn much less money and the law of supply and demand intervenes not only in terms of salaries (since when the supply of workers is greater than the available jobs can absorb, employers will be in a position of force to hire only those who accept the lowest salaries), but also in terms of the supply and demand for the crops they are selling, if the demand is higher than the amount of crops available, these will become more expensive and because of that employers will be forced to hire more employees to cope with the demand (and will have to pay them more as the need for more employees to harvest more will be greater), if on the other hand, demand is low, then the crops will cost very little and employers will not pay much for their cultivation since they will have more than enough employees to harvest the existing crops to meet the low demand. Illegal migrant farmworkers are indeed a form of international competition; they are tolerated and necessary for local employers because they are willing to accept the lowest salaries and no labor, medical, or any other kind of protection at all. Unions have known that for ages and they have always fought both to stop illegal immigration and to provide some legal footing to illegal farm workers since that will prevent employers from using them to pull salaries down (this is called social dumping). Another form of international competition is crops that are imported from countries with no environmental or labor protections were workers are paid even less than in the US and that make it possible for their employers to sell their produce even at lower prices than those produced locally in the US. Finally, as technology progresses, more and more tasks in agriculture become mechanized and automated, requiring even less workers and this forces those who are absolutely needing a job to accept the lowest wages.
