This is my favorite time of the year – blink and you’ll miss it. It’s technically spring, but snow isn’t out of the question, we still have freezing temperatures at night, landscapes are brown, and days can be gloomy and cold. While nothing about the previous sentence is appealing to me, what I love about early spring is that the best is yet to come. But as we wait patiently (or impatiently) for winter to loosen its grip over the Midwest, spring is subtly taking over. The changes seemingly happen overnight: suddenly the grass is green, spring ephemerals are blooming, and the birds are back.

Labor Outlook for 2026

I recently came across a Nursery Management article from October, 2007, titled “Top Issues That Will Affect Your Business”. It talked about the findings of a survey of container growers that had been done to understand their top concerns and issues. The first bullet point on the list is: “Labor cost and availability”. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and labor is still the biggest challenge facing our industry. While specific concerns may change from year to year, overall, the rising cost of wages, limited availability of qualified labor, and barriers to automation remain as the biggest obstacles to finding a long-term solution to our labor problem.