H-2B Workers on a Landscaping Crew: The Three-Fourths Guarantee and the Hours Record You Owe (2026)

H-2B Workers on a Landscaping Crew: The Three-Fourths Guarantee and the Hours Record You Owe (2026)

The short answer: When you bring H-2B workers onto a landscaping crew, you sign a job order that promises them a certain number of hours, and the program holds you to three-fourths of it. For every 12-week stretch of the season, you must offer enough work to reach at least 75 percent of the hours in the job order, and if you fall short you pay the difference anyway. The regulation, 20 CFR 655.20, also tells you exactly what to record to prove it: the hours you offered each day, the hours each worker actually worked, and the start and end times of every workday, kept for three years and summarized on every pay stub. A punch clock that records the day as it happens is most of that record.

Landscaping is the program's largest user. Landscaping and groundskeeping workers made up about 39 percent of all H-2B certifications in fiscal 2023 according to Department of Labor data, and the National Association of Landscape Professionals puts the industry's share at nearly 40 percent. For fiscal 2026 the government added 64,716 supplemental visas on top of the 66,000 statutory cap. A lot of small operators are running this program for the first time, and the hours record is the part the petition paperwork never explains.

What the Job Order Actually Promises

The H-2B job order is a contract. It states the hourly wage, the dates of need, and the number of hours per day and per week the job involves. The wage must be at least the highest of the prevailing wage the Department of Labor sets for the occupation and area, or the federal, state, or local minimum wage, and it is owed for all hours worked for the entire period of the job order. Pay is due at least every two weeks, or more often if that is the prevailing practice in your area.

The hours figure is the part owners underestimate. A job order that says 40 hours a week is not a ceiling or an estimate. It is the baseline the three-fourths guarantee is measured against. If your crew lead builds the schedule around whatever the week's jobs happen to need, the job order has been breached before anyone noticed.

The Three-Fourths Guarantee, Week by Week

Under 20 CFR 655.20(f), the employer must guarantee to offer each worker employment for a total number of work hours equal to at least three-fourths of the workdays in each 12-week period. If the job order is shorter than 120 days, the period is six weeks instead. The periods run on your pay workweek and start on the later of the worker's arrival or the first date of need in the job order.

Three details decide whether you pass:

• Hours offered count, not just hours worked. If you offer a full eight-hour day and a worker chooses not to come in, those eight hours count toward the guarantee, up to the job order's daily maximum. You need a record that the day was offered.
• Every hour worked counts, including the long days. Hours a worker puts in beyond eight in a day count toward the guarantee as well. A heavy May does not excuse a thin August on its own, because the guarantee is checked on each 12-week period, not on the season as a whole.
• A shortfall is paid, not forgiven. If the offered hours come in under three-fourths for a period, the employer must pay the worker the amount the worker would have earned had the guaranteed hours been worked.

A worked example. A 40-hour job order over a 12-week period promises 480 hours. Three-fourths is 360. If rain and a slow June mean you offered 330 hours, you owe each worker 30 hours of pay at the offered wage for that period, whether or not anyone complained.

One honest caveat: since fiscal 2016, Congress has attached a rider to the Department of Labor's funding that bars the department from spending money to enforce the three-fourths guarantee, and it has kept renewing it. The regulation was never withdrawn. The department's own enforcement handbook says the legal obligation remains, which means the guarantee is still a term of the job order your workers signed and can still be the basis of a complaint or a private claim. Run the crew as though it is enforced, because the record you would need either way is the same.

The Record the Rule Names

Section 655.20(i) lists the earnings records an H-2B employer keeps. For each worker it includes:

• the nature, amount, and location of the work performed
• the number of hours of work offered each day, separated into hours within the guarantee and hours beyond it
• the hours actually worked each day
• the time the worker began and ended each workday
• the reasons for any shortfall between hours offered and hours worked
• the rate of pay, earnings per pay period, and the amount and reason for every deduction or addition

Then, on or before every payday, each worker gets an earnings statement showing the hours offered each workweek, the hours actually worked each workweek, the rate, total earnings, itemized deductions, and the pay period dates. The Department of Labor's H-2B fact sheet puts the retention period for payroll and related program records at three years.

Read that list against a standard timesheet and the gaps show. Most crews record hours worked. Almost none record the start and end time of each day in a way that survives a question two seasons later, and nobody records hours offered unless a system does it for them. The shortfall reason is a third thing nobody writes down: a rained-out Tuesday the crew was told to stay home for is an offered day only if you can show it was offered.

Overtime Does Not Change Because of the Visa

H-2B workers are W-2 employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act applies to them exactly as it applies to the rest of the crew: 1.5x the regular rate for every hour over 40 in the workweek, with the state rules on top where they exist. The job order's offered wage is the floor for straight time, and the overtime premium is calculated on the regular rate the same way as for anyone else. If your H-2B crew runs 50-hour weeks in peak season, that is 10 hours of overtime per worker per week, and the three-fourths guarantee is irrelevant to it. The two rules pull in opposite directions: one punishes offering too little work, the other prices offering too much.

A crew lead who hands in weekly totals cannot answer either rule. Overtime needs the workweek boundary. The guarantee needs every day, offered and worked, with a start and an end. The only record that satisfies both is one made at the moment the worker punches in and punches out.

The Rest of the Checklist That Depends on Dates

Several other H-2B obligations turn on dates and hours your time records already hold:

• Visa and border fees are reimbursed in the first workweek. Inbound transportation and daily subsistence are reimbursed no later than the point where the worker has completed 50 percent of the job order period. Knowing which day is the halfway point requires knowing which day each worker started.
• Separation notices. If a worker leaves or is dismissed before the end of the job order, you notify the Office of Foreign Labor Certification in writing within two work days of discovering it, and the Department of Homeland Security as well. A worker who fails to report for five consecutive scheduled working days without consent is treated as having abandoned the job, and that count starts from the last day the person punched in.
• Return transportation is owed when the job order ends or a worker is dismissed early, unless the worker moves straight to another H-2B employer.
• Deductions must be disclosed in the job order, and no deduction may pull pay below the offered wage.

Every one of those is a date question answered by a punch record.

Keep the Record Without a Second Spreadsheet

Punch records the workday as the crew lives it. Each worker punches in on arrival at the job site and punches out when the day ends, from their own phone or a shared iPad in the yard set up as a kiosk with a PIN. Each shift carries the job site, the punch-in time, the punch-out time, and the lunch break, which covers the location of the work, the hours actually worked, and the start and end of each workday in one record nobody has to reconstruct.

Hours offered is the one piece you add. A manager can add a shift for a day the crew was told to stay home, so the offered day sits in the record with the same date and job site as a worked one. Keep the reason, rain or no work, in your own file beside it, since that is the one item on the list a punch clock does not hold. At the end of each 12-week period, Timesheets shows every person's shifts pay period by pay period, and the Reports Excel export carries an Hours by day sheet, so the three-fourths check is one column against another instead of a reconstruction.

Overtime is calculated automatically against your fixed workweek. Managers approve the week on web or iPhone before payroll, and the approved hours export to QuickBooks Online or to a QuickBooks or Excel CSV. Punch runs in Spanish as well as English, chosen per person, so a worker from Guanajuato sees the same punch screen in their own language and the owner sees the same hours in theirs. There is no camera at the punch and no photo of anyone's face. A job-site geofence confirms the punch-in, which is the right amount of verification for a crew that has already traveled a long way to trust you.

Pricing is flat per workspace, with every plan including every feature and no per-user line item, so the ten workers who arrive in April do not change the shape of the bill. Job sites are never a billing unit either. Each plan has a seat cap, and every active member, owner included, takes a seat.

Start Punch before the first worker lands, so the record begins on day one.

Common Questions

Does the three-fourths guarantee apply to the whole season or to each period?

Each period. The rule measures every 12-week period on its own, or every six-week period for a job order under 120 days, and a shortfall in one period is owed even if an earlier period ran heavy.

Do declined hours count against me?

No. Hours you offered and the worker declined count as hours offered, up to the daily hours in the job order. The protection is only as good as your proof that the day was offered, which is why the record of hours offered each day is a required item.

Can I count overtime hours toward the guarantee?

Yes. All hours actually worked, including hours beyond eight in a day, count toward the three-fourths figure. They are still owed at the overtime premium under the FLSA where they push a workweek past 40.

Do my U.S. workers doing the same job have any of these rights?

Corresponding U.S. workers in substantially the same work are owed the same wage and the same terms, including the guarantee, under the same regulation. The appropriations rider that limits enforcement of the guarantee also limits enforcement of the corresponding employment definition, but the obligation itself was never removed.

---

This article is general information, not legal advice. H-2B rules change with each year's appropriations act and with Department of Labor guidance. Confirm your obligations with the current regulation at 20 CFR 655.20, the Department of Labor's H-2B fact sheets, and a qualified immigration or employment attorney before setting policy.