H1B Salary vs National Median for the Occupation

To answer the question of if H1B salaries lower or higher than national averages. I analyzed data from the Department of Labor of H1B Labor Condition Applications (LCA) where employers submit the wages as the first stage in a H1B application. I took these and joined them to national level statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s 2018 OES Report to compare median wages of H1B applications versus the median wages for the same occupation. If you’re interested there are more details at the bottom of the page under methodology.

Note: This does not take into account differences in geography and years of experience.

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Architecture and Engineering Occupations

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

Business and Financial Operations Occupations

Computer and Mathematical Occupations

Education, Training, and Library Occupations

Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations + Legal Occupations

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations

Management Occupations

Methodology and Notes

This doesn't adjust for job specific needs such as specific skills with in an occupation, years of experience, or location. The OES data does not include experience levels, and the data on specific geographic areas by occupation code can have some missing data. In addition I had to use the 2018 OES due to remapping of job codes that happened in the 2019 and later results.

In addition, many of the jobs are similar in function such as computer programmer vs software developer, but the incomes have different medians. This can introduce the situation when an application could be moved between similar jobs where the pay difference is lower.

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