8 ms·

The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/fil

The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/OLA_Signed_H-1B_Characteristics_Congressional_Report_FY2023.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O... Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.

spwa4 1y ago
Haven't you heard how cheating that works? This is what was filled in on the H1B applications. The government doesn't check that, and so companies don't pay. Second, Indians have to pay their bosses to get a job. Their real pay is at least $20k lower. And there's far worse as well.
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  Do you have any articles or anything on the latter? I had not heard of that.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    Easy to find: https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage-theft-in-the-h-1b-program/ https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage... https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-program/ https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr... https://www.aila.org/ice-it-company-pleads-guilty-h-1b-visa-fraud https://www.aila.org/ice-it-company-pleads-guilty-h-1b-visa-... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-recognize-and-report-cases-of-h-1b-fraud-or-abuse-by-employer.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-recognize-and...
foota 1y ago
What's the median pay of big tech workers? I started at 150k 8 years ago as a new grad, for comparison.
- legitster 1y ago
  OP's comment still makes no sense then. H1bs are not hollowing out "middle class" wage earners then - the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners. But also, the H1b median salary for a software engineer is ~$120k, which is almost identical to that of the US median overall - so all of this hullabaloo seems pretty groundless.
  - rramadass 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Pretty much. All this did is now create a thousand talents program for India. H1B visa abuse by consultancies and mass recruiters is a real issue, but this now incentivized companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Pfizer, Cheveron etc to expand their Indian offices. Edit: can't reply > Was there any reason for them not to? It's cheaper than H1B anyways. Spending an additional $10-15k in visa filing fees isn't that big of a deal for an employer who's already paying around 25-35% in withholding and benefits, but at $100K that makes it enough that if you needed to sponsor 10 people on an H1B, you now hit the monetary amount to avail GCC tax rebates and subsidies in most of Eastern Europe and India, where they will give you an additional $10-20k in tax credits and subsidies per head. Basically, opening a new office abroad just to save on $10-15k of filing fees per employees wasn't worth it, but now that it'll be $100k per employee, the math just shifted. > Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate? VC now, not a director anymore. But help me find a new grad with 3-4 years of exploit development and OS internals experience in the US. I can't. On the other hand, I can in Tel Aviv. There's a reason the entire cybersecurity industry has shifted outside the US. Large sectors of the US tech scene just lack ANY domestic know-how.
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      OK. But I'm not fighting against them for jobs here. I'm not fighting against H1Bs who are willing to put up with different shared housing situations than I am for housing here.
riku_iki 1y ago
your link says that those numbers are after some time spent in US, and initial payment is 75k for 25p and 94k for 50p. Also, those numbers are bumped up by bigtech who doesn't discriminate by visa, so pays in bodyshops are even lower and tech salaries are way higher than that in US.
pants2 1y ago
That tells us nothing without knowing the median pay of the jobs they're replacing.
dgs_sgd 1y ago
You seem to be suggesting that the H1B pulls wages up because the median pay is higher than the median overall pay in the country? That’s not a valid comparison, you’d have to compare the H1B’s salary to the median pay in their specialty.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  The math of bringing an employee onsite on an H1B just to depress wages does not work unless it is below the 25th percentile of wages (which is $90k). Once you are breaking the $100k mark and want to only save costs, you are better off opening a GCC in Eastern Europe, Israel, or India, which is what most companies started doing once remote work became normalized in the early 2020s. All this did is make a free "Thousand Talents" program for India, especially in chemical, petroleum, biopharma, and biochemical engineering - industries where the delta between US and India salaries aren't significant but the talent gap in the US is real. There are much smarter ways to crack down on H1B abuse by consultancies - this ain't it. Edit: can't reply, but here's why this is dumb Assuming I am in Dallas (a fairly prominent domestic IT services hub) and hiring an H1B employee. In Dallas, a wage around $95k base is fairly standard based on JPMC, DXC, and C1's salaries in the area. That $95k an employee is has an additional 18% in employer required taxes and withholdings. Add to that an additional 5-10% for retirement account and insurance plans. That $95k employee became around $115k-125k. Once salaries start breaking into the 6 figure mark, that 23-35% in overhead starts adding up very fast. On top of that visa processing before this rule costed around $15-20k in additional legal fees on the employer's side. If I'm at the point where I'm paying a low six figure salary, I'm better off opening an office in Warsaw or Praha or Hyderabad where I can safely pay $50k-60k in base to get top 10% talent while getting a $10k-20k per head tax credit over a 3-5 year period depending on the amount I invest building a GCC because my after tax cost at that point becomes $50-60k per employee. These credits tend to require a $1M investment, and with the proposed H1B fee, this made that kind of FDI much easier to justify than it was before. At least with the current status quo, if I was hiring an ML Engineer at MS or an SRE at Google (a large number of whom are H1Bs as well), I could justify hiring within the US, but adding an additional $100K filing fee just gives me no incentive at all to expand headcount domestically. You don't use the stick if you also don't have the carrot. > You are not taking into account section 174, It takes you 15 years to depreciate foreign salary vs first year That's a rounding error now that it costs $100K to renew or apply for an H1B visa. And for larger organizations breaking the mid-8 figures in revenue mark, section 174 changes never had an impact one way or the other - it was mostly local dev shops and MSPs that faced the brunt of the section 174 onslaught. > Honestly, even Germany is probably better bang-for-the-buck than Hyderabad Germany needs to severely reduce employer contributions and taxes to become cost competitive against Warsaw, Praha, or Hyd for software and chip design jobs. That said, this is a net positive for Germany's biotech, mechanical, biopharma, and other engineering industries that aren't software or chip design related.
colordrops 1y ago
That's WAY lower than typical tech salaries.
- rr808 1y ago
  In tech hubs maybe, in the rest of the country its high.
nerpderp82 1y ago
It definitely suppresses TECH worker pay and decreases mobility. For the H1B they become indentured servants often working 60+ hrs a week. H1B holders are paid less for the same job, keeping wages down.
- rramadass 1y ago
  No. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
  - nerpderp82 1y ago
    > In 2021, the median wage of an H-1B worker was $108,000, compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers in general. This compares medians across to huge populations. I have seen many H1Bs making less and working more.
    - t-3 1y ago
      Both can be true. H-1B's earn less than their domestic peers, but far more than the domestic underclass they are brought in to keep down.
    - rramadass 1y ago
      It is the distribution that matters at a wage level cluster defined by DOL. There are four (i.e. entry, qualified, experienced, and fully competent) and those are higher than the medians. See also Understanding H-1B Minimum Salary Requirements for Eligibility - https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-requirements https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-r...
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  While the permanent residence process is clearly broken for people from India and China, I don't think it's accurate to characterise H1B workers as indentured servants. The paperwork for changing jobs on an H1B is fairly easy and is not subject to the H1B lottery. Cap-exempt H1B holders working for universities are restricted to switching only to other cap-exempt employers, but even then I never felt I had to work 60+ hours a week.
nothercastle 1y ago
You aren’t accounting for hours worked. Your H1B are probably putting in 30-50% more hours and with put up with any bullshit you dish out.
kelnos 1y ago
Can you explain how those statistics support your conclusion? I don't see the link you're drawing between them. I also am not convinced that those statistics alone can be used to draw such a conclusion; there's more to it than that.
giantg2 1y ago
We would have to look at that by industry. For example, if median developer pay is $130k, then both of your numbers are below that and would bring the median down. $118k for highly skilled workers (purpose of H1B) seems low to me. Additionally, the upper bound for the middle class in all 50 states is above $100k.
- shagie 1y ago
  The H-1B also includes professions like teacher and medical technician where the average wage is closer to $60k / year. Doing a broad "all professions" for H-1B misses out on the various areas where they work and appears to assume that they are all professions that regularly pay in the 90th percentile of American overall wages.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
Citations of broad H-1B visa abuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305623
kypro 1y ago
> Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong. The stats you provide here don't support your claim. H1B visa holders can be paid more on average while still having a downward effect on wages... Imagine that some car model costs $200,000 to buy in the US. However, an entrepreneur realises they can can import the same car from a poorer country for just $100,000 then sell it in the US for less than the manufacturer themselves. The manufacturer finds out about this and says, "hey! you're selling my car for less", but the importer says, "no, actually, you'll find the median car in the US is $50,000 so I'm technically increasing car prices". So what you're saying could be wrong in two ways... One you could be wrong in the sense that even if it does increase median wages, that doesn't mean it necessary increases the median wage of US citizens if now a significant percentage the best employment opportunities are going to H1B visa holders instead of citizens. But secondly, and the point I was trying to make with the car analogy, is that you could be wrong about the average wages going up too if H1B visa holders are taking jobs which would pay even more were it not for HB1 visas. So if the average wage of a SWE in the US is say $150k, but the average H1B visa holder is being paid $120k, H1Bs are clearly not "dragging wages up". And realistically it's far more likely H1B visa holders suppress wages given how relatively high US wages are. I'll end this comment by saying that personally I think this idea that giving the best opportunities to immigrants is probably directly wrong for many reasons. Of course, allowing in businesses and individuals who will create jobs makes a lot of sense, but what you really want is the best opportunities going to your own citizens, then to bring in cheap labour to fill the crappy jobs citizens don't really want to do, but are now increasingly doing when they leave university like working in a bar or becoming a barista. If there's a great job a company can't fill with the domestic workforce perhaps they should train someone for that role or take a risk on a recent graduate like in the old days?
charliea0 1y ago
A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you. There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Value for who? Certainly not the majority of Americans. Depressed wages increase profits, which go to shareholders. Most Americans do not benefit from the H-1B grift. I’ll even argue it hurts US citizens by importing immigrants who aren’t necessary from a labor supply perspective (for those on the visa who are not exceptional talent), who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units. A few select tech and financial services companies, and their shareholders, benefit the most from the program. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-know-about-the-us-h-1b-visa-program/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-k... https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754 https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754
  - charliea0 1y ago
    I hire a programmer to code my app, SuperConnect++. I charge $0.99 to download the app. People buy the app if it's worth more than $0.99 to them. If 150,000 people buy the app, then I have ~$150,000 of revenue. I can pay a programmer $100,000 a year and have $50,000 left over. 150,000 people benefited from the app. Now say I have to pay an additional $100,000 visa fee for my programmer. My cost of $200,000 is less than my revenue of $150,000. I don't build the app. I don't get $50,000. 150,000 people who would have bought the app don't benefit from it. The biggest loss is to the Americans who don't get to buy the app. There are other possibilities, maybe I increase the price to $1.99 or I hire an American. We can see that those are both bad. The former extracts $150,000 extra dollars from American consumers. Since unemployment is low for Americans and an American programmer can't have two jobs at once, the later just means that some other project that the American programmer would have worked on is not completed.
diogenescynic 1y ago
I've seen other analysis showing the 80% of the wages are below the prevailing wage of the equivalent role. It's definitely about wage suppression and having an indentured servant.
mancerayder 1y ago
Your second paragraph doesn't follow the first. 90-118K might feel like a lot to you, or to many, but it doesn't mean that those wages aren't dragged DOWN. If you live in SF, NYC, Seattle or other HCOL areas, 90-118K is definitely not HIGH. And software jobs pay WAY more than that. H1's definitely are paid BELOW the prevailing wage for the same job, in the same area. So compare apples to apples.
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  The H1B salary requirements are based on prevailing wages for the job location. So for Software developers in San Francisco, based on the experience level of the job that will be: Level 1 Wage:$65.24 / Hour - $135,699 / Year Level 2 Wage:$77.71 / Hour - $161,637 / Year Level 3 Wage:$90.18 / Hour - $187,574 / Year Level 4 Wage:$102.65 / Hour - $213,512 / Year (Compared to the all levels $175k occupational median vs the $74k all occupation median.)
  - shagie 1y ago
    (Backing this up... though as I write this, the site with the source data is down - https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages ... so using one that uses that data... https://flcprevailingwage.com https://flcprevailingwage.com ) Software Developer (15-1252). Eau Claire County. Bachelors degree. 0 experience. The prevailing wage is Level 1 Wage:$36.54 / Hour - $76,003 / Year Change it to San Francisco County. Level 1 Wage:$65.24 / Hour - $135,699 / Year And so, as noted... it is location dependent.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Guest workers have no long term stake in living in the US unless they win a green card. Six years and they're out. Given this state of affairs, they will be compliant and not demand increasing compensation when they don't have to plan for a future in the US. Get too uppity and you get the boot. The suppression is hidden within this dynamic and sinks the prevailing wage for all workers.
dinkumthinkum 1y ago
Are you really not familiar with management and corporations? Firstly, stating those numbers does not prove your point but it is all belied by exactly the reason all of us that are aware of the realities know, which is that for the most part part H-1Bs are sought after because of them being cheaper. The implications from those like Gates, that the average person in the U.S. on an H-1B is a Turing or Wozniak or whatever is laughable, This is not to denigrate them but the so-called "genius visa" is a farce and the notion that there are not Americans that can do the jobs is also quite ridiculous. These things are heavily gamed and people from the countries that produce the majority of such applicants know that. I think you if you analyze it further, you may find it is all a lot more cynical than you might suspect. Why do you think H-1B visa holders in tech primarily come from a small set of countries that are not centers of tech innovation? Is it really that Europeans can't figure out bubble-sort?

spwa4 1y ago

Haven't you heard how cheating that works? This is what was filled in on the H1B applications. The government doesn't check that, and so companies don't pay. Second, Indians have to pay their bosses to get a job. Their real pay is at least $20k lower. And there's far worse as well.

mikestorrent 1y ago
Do you have any articles or anything on the latter? I had not heard of that.
- spwa4 1y ago
  Easy to find: https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage-theft-in-the-h-1b-program/ https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage... https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-program/ https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr... https://www.aila.org/ice-it-company-pleads-guilty-h-1b-visa-fraud https://www.aila.org/ice-it-company-pleads-guilty-h-1b-visa-... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-recognize-and-report-cases-of-h-1b-fraud-or-abuse-by-employer.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-recognize-and...

foota 1y ago

What's the median pay of big tech workers? I started at 150k 8 years ago as a new grad, for comparison.

legitster 1y ago
OP's comment still makes no sense then. H1bs are not hollowing out "middle class" wage earners then - the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners. But also, the H1b median salary for a software engineer is ~$120k, which is almost identical to that of the US median overall - so all of this hullabaloo seems pretty groundless.
- rramadass 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Pretty much. All this did is now create a thousand talents program for India. H1B visa abuse by consultancies and mass recruiters is a real issue, but this now incentivized companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Pfizer, Cheveron etc to expand their Indian offices. Edit: can't reply > Was there any reason for them not to? It's cheaper than H1B anyways. Spending an additional $10-15k in visa filing fees isn't that big of a deal for an employer who's already paying around 25-35% in withholding and benefits, but at $100K that makes it enough that if you needed to sponsor 10 people on an H1B, you now hit the monetary amount to avail GCC tax rebates and subsidies in most of Eastern Europe and India, where they will give you an additional $10-20k in tax credits and subsidies per head. Basically, opening a new office abroad just to save on $10-15k of filing fees per employees wasn't worth it, but now that it'll be $100k per employee, the math just shifted. > Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate? VC now, not a director anymore. But help me find a new grad with 3-4 years of exploit development and OS internals experience in the US. I can't. On the other hand, I can in Tel Aviv. There's a reason the entire cybersecurity industry has shifted outside the US. Large sectors of the US tech scene just lack ANY domestic know-how.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    OK. But I'm not fighting against them for jobs here. I'm not fighting against H1Bs who are willing to put up with different shared housing situations than I am for housing here.

riku_iki 1y ago

your link says that those numbers are after some time spent in US, and initial payment is 75k for 25p and 94k for 50p. Also, those numbers are bumped up by bigtech who doesn't discriminate by visa, so pays in bodyshops are even lower and tech salaries are way higher than that in US.

pants2 1y ago

That tells us nothing without knowing the median pay of the jobs they're replacing.

dgs_sgd 1y ago

You seem to be suggesting that the H1B pulls wages up because the median pay is higher than the median overall pay in the country? That’s not a valid comparison, you’d have to compare the H1B’s salary to the median pay in their specialty.

alephnerd 1y ago
The math of bringing an employee onsite on an H1B just to depress wages does not work unless it is below the 25th percentile of wages (which is $90k). Once you are breaking the $100k mark and want to only save costs, you are better off opening a GCC in Eastern Europe, Israel, or India, which is what most companies started doing once remote work became normalized in the early 2020s. All this did is make a free "Thousand Talents" program for India, especially in chemical, petroleum, biopharma, and biochemical engineering - industries where the delta between US and India salaries aren't significant but the talent gap in the US is real. There are much smarter ways to crack down on H1B abuse by consultancies - this ain't it. Edit: can't reply, but here's why this is dumb Assuming I am in Dallas (a fairly prominent domestic IT services hub) and hiring an H1B employee. In Dallas, a wage around $95k base is fairly standard based on JPMC, DXC, and C1's salaries in the area. That $95k an employee is has an additional 18% in employer required taxes and withholdings. Add to that an additional 5-10% for retirement account and insurance plans. That $95k employee became around $115k-125k. Once salaries start breaking into the 6 figure mark, that 23-35% in overhead starts adding up very fast. On top of that visa processing before this rule costed around $15-20k in additional legal fees on the employer's side. If I'm at the point where I'm paying a low six figure salary, I'm better off opening an office in Warsaw or Praha or Hyderabad where I can safely pay $50k-60k in base to get top 10% talent while getting a $10k-20k per head tax credit over a 3-5 year period depending on the amount I invest building a GCC because my after tax cost at that point becomes $50-60k per employee. These credits tend to require a $1M investment, and with the proposed H1B fee, this made that kind of FDI much easier to justify than it was before. At least with the current status quo, if I was hiring an ML Engineer at MS or an SRE at Google (a large number of whom are H1Bs as well), I could justify hiring within the US, but adding an additional $100K filing fee just gives me no incentive at all to expand headcount domestically. You don't use the stick if you also don't have the carrot. > You are not taking into account section 174, It takes you 15 years to depreciate foreign salary vs first year That's a rounding error now that it costs $100K to renew or apply for an H1B visa. And for larger organizations breaking the mid-8 figures in revenue mark, section 174 changes never had an impact one way or the other - it was mostly local dev shops and MSPs that faced the brunt of the section 174 onslaught. > Honestly, even Germany is probably better bang-for-the-buck than Hyderabad Germany needs to severely reduce employer contributions and taxes to become cost competitive against Warsaw, Praha, or Hyd for software and chip design jobs. That said, this is a net positive for Germany's biotech, mechanical, biopharma, and other engineering industries that aren't software or chip design related.

colordrops 1y ago

That's WAY lower than typical tech salaries.

rr808 1y ago
In tech hubs maybe, in the rest of the country its high.

nerpderp82 1y ago

It definitely suppresses TECH worker pay and decreases mobility. For the H1B they become indentured servants often working 60+ hrs a week. H1B holders are paid less for the same job, keeping wages down.

rramadass 1y ago
No. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
- nerpderp82 1y ago
  > In 2021, the median wage of an H-1B worker was $108,000, compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers in general. This compares medians across to huge populations. I have seen many H1Bs making less and working more.
  - t-3 1y ago
    Both can be true. H-1B's earn less than their domestic peers, but far more than the domestic underclass they are brought in to keep down.
  - rramadass 1y ago
    It is the distribution that matters at a wage level cluster defined by DOL. There are four (i.e. entry, qualified, experienced, and fully competent) and those are higher than the medians. See also Understanding H-1B Minimum Salary Requirements for Eligibility - https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-requirements https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-r...
laurencerowe 1y ago
While the permanent residence process is clearly broken for people from India and China, I don't think it's accurate to characterise H1B workers as indentured servants. The paperwork for changing jobs on an H1B is fairly easy and is not subject to the H1B lottery. Cap-exempt H1B holders working for universities are restricted to switching only to other cap-exempt employers, but even then I never felt I had to work 60+ hours a week.

nothercastle 1y ago

You aren’t accounting for hours worked. Your H1B are probably putting in 30-50% more hours and with put up with any bullshit you dish out.

kelnos 1y ago

Can you explain how those statistics support your conclusion? I don't see the link you're drawing between them. I also am not convinced that those statistics alone can be used to draw such a conclusion; there's more to it than that.

giantg2 1y ago

We would have to look at that by industry. For example, if median developer pay is $130k, then both of your numbers are below that and would bring the median down. $118k for highly skilled workers (purpose of H1B) seems low to me. Additionally, the upper bound for the middle class in all 50 states is above $100k.

shagie 1y ago
The H-1B also includes professions like teacher and medical technician where the average wage is closer to $60k / year. Doing a broad "all professions" for H-1B misses out on the various areas where they work and appears to assume that they are all professions that regularly pay in the 90th percentile of American overall wages.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Citations of broad H-1B visa abuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305623

kypro 1y ago

> Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong. The stats you provide here don't support your claim. H1B visa holders can be paid more on average while still having a downward effect on wages... Imagine that some car model costs $200,000 to buy in the US. However, an entrepreneur realises they can can import the same car from a poorer country for just $100,000 then sell it in the US for less than the manufacturer themselves. The manufacturer finds out about this and says, "hey! you're selling my car for less", but the importer says, "no, actually, you'll find the median car in the US is $50,000 so I'm technically increasing car prices". So what you're saying could be wrong in two ways... One you could be wrong in the sense that even if it does increase median wages, that doesn't mean it necessary increases the median wage of US citizens if now a significant percentage the best employment opportunities are going to H1B visa holders instead of citizens. But secondly, and the point I was trying to make with the car analogy, is that you could be wrong about the average wages going up too if H1B visa holders are taking jobs which would pay even more were it not for HB1 visas. So if the average wage of a SWE in the US is say $150k, but the average H1B visa holder is being paid $120k, H1Bs are clearly not "dragging wages up". And realistically it's far more likely H1B visa holders suppress wages given how relatively high US wages are. I'll end this comment by saying that personally I think this idea that giving the best opportunities to immigrants is probably directly wrong for many reasons. Of course, allowing in businesses and individuals who will create jobs makes a lot of sense, but what you really want is the best opportunities going to your own citizens, then to bring in cheap labour to fill the crappy jobs citizens don't really want to do, but are now increasingly doing when they leave university like working in a bar or becoming a barista. If there's a great job a company can't fill with the domestic workforce perhaps they should train someone for that role or take a risk on a recent graduate like in the old days?

charliea0 1y ago

A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you. There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Value for who? Certainly not the majority of Americans. Depressed wages increase profits, which go to shareholders. Most Americans do not benefit from the H-1B grift. I’ll even argue it hurts US citizens by importing immigrants who aren’t necessary from a labor supply perspective (for those on the visa who are not exceptional talent), who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units. A few select tech and financial services companies, and their shareholders, benefit the most from the program. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-know-about-the-us-h-1b-visa-program/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-k... https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754 https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754
- charliea0 1y ago
  I hire a programmer to code my app, SuperConnect++. I charge $0.99 to download the app. People buy the app if it's worth more than $0.99 to them. If 150,000 people buy the app, then I have ~$150,000 of revenue. I can pay a programmer $100,000 a year and have $50,000 left over. 150,000 people benefited from the app. Now say I have to pay an additional $100,000 visa fee for my programmer. My cost of $200,000 is less than my revenue of $150,000. I don't build the app. I don't get $50,000. 150,000 people who would have bought the app don't benefit from it. The biggest loss is to the Americans who don't get to buy the app. There are other possibilities, maybe I increase the price to $1.99 or I hire an American. We can see that those are both bad. The former extracts $150,000 extra dollars from American consumers. Since unemployment is low for Americans and an American programmer can't have two jobs at once, the later just means that some other project that the American programmer would have worked on is not completed.

diogenescynic 1y ago

I've seen other analysis showing the 80% of the wages are below the prevailing wage of the equivalent role. It's definitely about wage suppression and having an indentured servant.

mancerayder 1y ago

Your second paragraph doesn't follow the first. 90-118K might feel like a lot to you, or to many, but it doesn't mean that those wages aren't dragged DOWN. If you live in SF, NYC, Seattle or other HCOL areas, 90-118K is definitely not HIGH. And software jobs pay WAY more than that. H1's definitely are paid BELOW the prevailing wage for the same job, in the same area. So compare apples to apples.

laurencerowe 1y ago
The H1B salary requirements are based on prevailing wages for the job location. So for Software developers in San Francisco, based on the experience level of the job that will be: Level 1 Wage:$65.24 / Hour - $135,699 / Year Level 2 Wage:$77.71 / Hour - $161,637 / Year Level 3 Wage:$90.18 / Hour - $187,574 / Year Level 4 Wage:$102.65 / Hour - $213,512 / Year (Compared to the all levels $175k occupational median vs the $74k all occupation median.)
- shagie 1y ago
  (Backing this up... though as I write this, the site with the source data is down - https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages ... so using one that uses that data... https://flcprevailingwage.com https://flcprevailingwage.com ) Software Developer (15-1252). Eau Claire County. Bachelors degree. 0 experience. The prevailing wage is Level 1 Wage:$36.54 / Hour - $76,003 / Year Change it to San Francisco County. Level 1 Wage:$65.24 / Hour - $135,699 / Year And so, as noted... it is location dependent.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

Guest workers have no long term stake in living in the US unless they win a green card. Six years and they're out. Given this state of affairs, they will be compliant and not demand increasing compensation when they don't have to plan for a future in the US. Get too uppity and you get the boot. The suppression is hidden within this dynamic and sinks the prevailing wage for all workers.

dinkumthinkum 1y ago

Are you really not familiar with management and corporations? Firstly, stating those numbers does not prove your point but it is all belied by exactly the reason all of us that are aware of the realities know, which is that for the most part part H-1Bs are sought after because of them being cheaper. The implications from those like Gates, that the average person in the U.S. on an H-1B is a Turing or Wozniak or whatever is laughable, This is not to denigrate them but the so-called "genius visa" is a farce and the notion that there are not Americans that can do the jobs is also quite ridiculous. These things are heavily gamed and people from the countries that produce the majority of such applicants know that. I think you if you analyze it further, you may find it is all a lot more cynical than you might suspect. Why do you think H-1B visa holders in tech primarily come from a small set of countries that are not centers of tech innovation? Is it really that Europeans can't figure out bubble-sort?