In early 2025, social media users began sharing the claim that about 40% of all U.S. farmworkers were undocumented immigrants.
Posts on X, Reddit and Facebook cited the alleged statistic. One post said, for example, that "at least 40% of the workers on America's farms are undocumented people."
These posts were largely correct based on the latest available data, depending on how one defines a "farmworker." According to the most up-to-date U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics from 2020 to 2022, 42% of hired crop farmworkers did not hold legal authorization to work in the United States.
This statistic has certain limitations. For example, it does not account for
Snopes reached out to the USDA's Economic Research Service to ask if the government has additional statistics on the percentage of total undocumented farmworkers and awaits a response.
Here is USDA's chart of the legal status of hired crop farmworkers:
(USDA, Economic Research Service/U.S. Department of Labor)
"The share of hired cropworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14 percent in 1989–91 to almost 55 percent in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40 percent," the USDA said on its website (see the section "Legal Status and Migration Practices of Hired Crop Farmworkers" and its subsection "Roughly Half of Hired Crop Farmworkers Lack Legal Immigration Status").
The USDA's data on the immigration status of crop farmworkers came from the U.S. Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS). The Agriculture Department's website also noted the limitations of the data — specifically, that it "excludes the growing number of H-2A workers, as well as all hired livestock workers." H-2A workers are people from outside of the country given legal authorization to fill seasonal or temporary agricultural job positions.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, H-2A workers represented 17% of the total agricultural workforce in budget year 2024.
It is also worth noting the USDA only provided data on hired crop farmworkers without legal authorization to work in the United States, not those without authorization to live in the United States. While people who either live or work in the United States are often described, without distinction, as "undocumented immigrants," it is possible to live in the United States legally but without a work permit.
Official U.S. statistics for all farmworkers (including dairy and livestock workers) without legal authorization to be in the country do not appear to exist. However, the Center for Migration Studies estimated in 2022 that about 45% of all U.S. agricultural workers were undocumented.
One study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found there are "no official statistics on the number of unauthorized immigrant dairy workers."
"Estimates range from 46 percent; to as high as 90 percent, with the most used estimate being 70 percent," the report said on Page 11.
This was not the first claim about undocumented agricultural workers that we've investigated. Previously, we looked into a rumor that 75% of farmworkers in Bakersfield, California, failed to show up for work amid January 2025 immigration raids.