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 for the position, 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. This makes the data useful for understanding the minimum compensation bar that 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 H-1B 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 practices.
Trend data — whether filings are increasing or decreasing 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. The data only covers positions filed for visa sponsorship, which may represent 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 may reflect data anomalies in the source filings
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the prevailing wage?
The prevailing wage is the average wage paid to workers in a specific occupation in a specific geographic area. The DOL uses survey data to determine these rates. H-1B employers must pay at least this amount.
Why do salary ranges vary so much for the same employer?
The same job title can encompass multiple seniority levels and locations. A "Software Engineer" filing in San Francisco will have a different prevailing wage than one in Austin. Additionally, companies file ranges to accommodate different experience levels within a title.
Does more H-1B filings mean the company prefers foreign workers?
Not necessarily. Large H-1B filing counts often correlate with overall company size and the competitiveness of the labor market for their roles. Technology companies with thousands of positions to fill naturally have more H-1B filings than smaller firms.
Are H-1B salaries lower than what domestic workers earn?
The prevailing wage requirement is designed to prevent this. Employers must pay H-1B workers at least the prevailing wage. However, filed base salary excludes equity and bonuses that may be substantial for domestic workers.
Quick reference table
| Signal | Source | Cadence | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| H-1B labor condition application | DOL OFLC | Quarterly | Wage benchmarking + visa-sponsorship history |
| OSHA DART injury rate | OSHA ITA | Annual | Workplace injury benchmark vs industry mean |
| WARN Act notice | State workforce agency | Event-driven | Mass-layoff history + 60-day notice context |
| Composite safety grade | PlainEmployers (derived) | Annual | Quick A-F readout normalized across NAICS sectors |
How to use this guide in practice
Open this guide in one tab and a live employer profile in a second tab. Each section below 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: comparing two retail employers
Suppose Employer A files 250 H-1B applications at $95,000 median wage with a Grade B safety record and 0 WARN notices in the last 3 years, while Employer B files 30 H-1B applications at $120,000 median wage with a Grade D safety record and 4 WARN notices affecting 1,200 workers. The $25,000 wage premium at Employer B is a real signal, but the safety and stability gaps point in the opposite direction. A reader applying the framework above would weigh those gaps against personal risk tolerance and career stage before deciding which offer to pursue.
Cross-references inside PlainEmployers
Every guide in this series links to live data pages. Browse all employers, look up an individual state, or compare industry sectors to apply each concept immediately.
External authoritative sources
Every claim in this guide cites a primary federal source — the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Foreign Labor Certification, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Injury Tracking Application, or state workforce-agency WARN registries. We do not cite secondary aggregators, opinion sites, or paywalled databases.
