Understanding H-1B Salary Data

When a U.S. employer wants to hire a foreign worker under the H-1B visa program, they must file a Labor Condition Application (LCA) with the Department of Labor. This filing includes the job title, offered wage, and work location. Because these are legal filings, not voluntary survey responses, they provide an unusually reliable window into employer compensation practices.

What the filings include

Each H-1B wage filing contains several data points that we display on PlainEmployers:

• Job title: The specific position being filled, often using Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes
• Salary range: The minimum and maximum wage offered, which must meet or exceed the prevailing wage for that occupation in that area
• Metro area: Where the worker will be employed, which affects the prevailing wage requirement
• Filing count: How many positions the employer is requesting for that job title

The prevailing-wage floor

Employers filing H-1B petitions must pay at least the prevailing wage, the average wage for that occupation in that geographic area as determined by the DOL. This means H-1B salary data has a built-in floor: very low wages for skilled positions would be rejected. That makes the data useful for understanding the minimum compensation bar major employers must clear for professional positions.

What the data reveals

Patterns in H-1B filings tell a story about an employer's hiring strategy. A company filing hundreds of petitions for software engineers in San Francisco signals heavy tech hiring. If their median salary is significantly higher than peers, it suggests aggressive compensation; if it is near the prevailing-wage floor, it may indicate cost-conscious hiring. Trend data, whether filings are rising or falling year over year, can indicate whether a company is expanding or contracting in specific roles and locations.

Important limitations

H-1B salary data has significant limitations that users should understand:

• Filed wages are base salary only; they typically exclude bonuses, stock options, RSUs, and other compensation that can be substantial at tech companies
• Not all employees are H-1B sponsored, so the data covers only positions filed for visa sponsorship, which may be a fraction of total headcount
• Some filings are speculative: companies may file LCAs they never use
• Salary ranges can be wide for the same job title, reflecting different experience levels
• Values above $500,000 per year usually reflect data anomalies in the source filings, which is why PlainEmployers computes medians from credible per-position records and suppresses implausible outliers

Quick reference table

How to use this guide in practice

Open this guide in one tab and a live employer profile in a second tab. Each section above maps to a section on the profile page, so you can read along while inspecting real data on a specific company you care about.

Worked example. Suppose Employer A files 250 H-1B applications at a $95,000 median wage with a Grade B safety record and zero WARN notices in three years, while Employer B files 30 applications at a $120,000 median wage with a Grade D safety record and 4 WARN notices. The $25,000 wage premium at Employer B is a real signal, but the safety and stability gaps point the other way. A reader applying the framework above would weigh those gaps against personal risk tolerance and career stage before deciding which offer to pursue.

Every guide in this series links to live data: browse all employers, compare industry sectors, or explore metro areas to apply each concept immediately. Every claim cites a primary federal source, the DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, OSHA's Injury Tracking Application, or state WARN registries, never secondary aggregators or paywalled databases.

Frequently asked questions