Do seasonal work visas suppress the earnings of incumbent farm workers?

This paper uses comprehensive tax and visa records to examine the impact of seasonalwork visas on the earnings of incumbent farm workers in the context of Australia’sSeasonal Worker Program (SWP). Using a triple-difference approach to exploit differencesin earnings growth across different low-skilled occupations within localities, we find noconvincing evidence that SWP visas reduced farm worker earnings. Our main null resultis robust to alternative specifications and approaches, including regional and national(skill-cell) difference-in-differences, and is consistent with the long term populationdecline in agricultural regions and a growing inability or unwillingness of the domesticworkforce to fill short-term agricultural roles.