Farmers and their families continue to provide the largest proportion of agricultural labor, but hired farmworkers are increasingly supplying a greater part of farm employment. This trend is expected to continue in the eighties with the hired labor proportion gradually increasing. Better information, including crucial individual state data on numbers of farmworkers, duration of employment, and key characteristics of workers, will be needed to assess current policies and legislation. The most significant hired farm labor issues of the eighties will be: improved employee benefits and workplace protections, such as farm safety regulations, workers' compensation, social security and unemployment insurance; stability of employment and income for hired farmworkers, possibly through agricultural worker placement programs; programs to show farm employers how to use hiring and personnel management techniques to improve labor-management relations and increase production efficiency; and the impact of technology on hired farmworkers. Currently, minority hired farmworkers, especially Hispanics, are more dependent on farmwork for income than other hired laborers in the agricultural sector. Less education and fewer marketable skills, combined with larger families, have aggravated minority farmworkers' social and economic problems. (Author)