Labor Shortage Hits Pennsylvania’s Mushroom Country

“This is the worst it’s ever been,” said Tim Hihn, Mr. Pantoja’s boss and co-owner of C.P. Yeatman & Sons, Inc., which supplies Whole Foods Market stores under the Mother Earth brand. Mr. Hihn says he has 20 percent fewer workers than he needs to fully harvest his crop. To try to solve the labor shortage, growers have been increasing wages. Yeatman & Sons in January raised piece rates at one of its farms to $1 for every five-pound box of mushrooms from 82 cents for large mushrooms and 80 cents for medium.  
Phillips Mushroom Farms recently upped the bonus harvesters get after picking 55 pounds in an hour from 11 cents a pound to 16 cents, said general manager Jim Angelucci. Good pickers, who start at $8.75 an hour, can collect 100 pounds an hour, he said, so the extra nickel can yield a $2.25 bump to $15.95 an hour. The change helped Phillips fill five jobs and resume full production, he said.Still, Mr. Angelucci worries it may not be enough to stop workers from peeling off for summer landscaping or construction jobs. “It’s one of the things that keeps you awake at night,” he said. “Are you going to go in the next day and find nobody’s there?”