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Issued MontAly          xenson               ooperaton        uly, 9
                       with the Larm Labor Stef:--
                           Facto p_ Figures
             Reports from 52 counties in the State office July 10.
       show that 1125 farmers requested 1694 farm workers during
       June. This does not include the demand for foreign labor
       and prisoners of war needed for harvesting and processing
       special crops.
             Besides this demand there is also a large potential
       demand which is never reported to the county offices or
       to the Farm Labor agents.
             Placements for the month of June added up to 1307,
       of which 941 were for seasonal and 366 for year-round
       farm jobs.
             At the end of the month', 1983 requests remained
       unfilled; 810 of these tere for seasonal and 1173 were
       for year-round farm labor.
             Since January 1, 1945, 4144 local or domestic farm
       hands, both seasonal and year-round have been placed by
       county offices.
             This number is far below the 1944 report which showed
       a total of 10,935 at the end of June. Of these 6,225 were
       seasonal and 4,710 were for year-round employment.
    The greater demand for farm labor in 1944 was due to the fact that the
canning season and other early summer jobs were well under way by the end
of June, while this year they had hardly started.
    It is now expected that the importation of foreign workers, the
prisoners of war, and large numbers of Texas migrant workers of Mexican
descent, will be sufficient to meet the general need for seasonal work
in the special crops. That does not mean that there will not be a
continued shortage of help on tho general farms.
                              Farm Wages
    Wages are practically the same as last year except on the lowest paid
farm jobs where there has been a slight increase. Wages for bean picking
have been advanced to two and one-half cents in at least five counties,
Clark, Brown, Price, Oconto and Shawano.
   While a number of service men formerly on farms are being discharged,
they are not returned to farms in proportion to the numbers that left the
farms,