Is H-1B used as cheap labor?

DOL sets the legal minimum pay for an H-1B job at one of four wage levels. Each level is a fixed point in the local pay range for the occupation. Level I is the 17th percentile. Level II is the 34th percentile. Level III is the 50th percentile, which is the local median. Level IV is the 67th percentile.

In FY2025, 62.4% of filings were at Level I or II. For these jobs, the legal minimum is below the local median for the same work.

DOL calls an employer “H-1B dependent” when H-1B workers are a large part of its staff. For an employer with 51 or more full-time workers, the limit is 15%.

“H-1B dependent” employers paid exactly the legal minimum on 52.0% of filings. Other employers did this on 27.9% of filings.

We compare the pay on each filing with the local median pay for the same occupation in the same area. The local median comes from DOL's own wage library.

57.1% of matched filings offer less than the local median. When a filing is below the median, the median gap is −$23,108 a year.

These large sponsors offer less than the local median most often. Each has 500 or more matched filings.

Each filing states where its wage floor came from. Most filings use government data. Some employers choose a private salary survey instead.

Filings with a private survey offer less than the local median 75.8% of the time. Filings with government data do this 55.3% of the time.

The survey publishers on the most filings:

DOL's Wage and Hour Division found H-1B violations in 2,886 cases. In these cases, employers agreed to pay $123.2M in back wages to 13,595 workers. DOL also assessed $11.7M in penalties.

Back wages by fiscal year of the findings. Each bar shows the number of cases on hover.

The employers with the most H-1B back wages:

A WARN notice tells the state about a large layoff before it occurs. We matched notices in Texas and California to employers with certified H-1B filings in the same fiscal year. The company names must match exactly.

153 companies filed 367 WARN notices to lay off 21,743 workers. In the same year, these companies had 21,923 H-1B filings certified.

The matched companies with the most workers in WARN notices:

Each year, employers register the people they want to hire. USCIS selects registrations at random. Up to the FY2024 lottery, each registration was one chance of selection. A person with registrations from several employers had several chances.

In FY2024, 408,891 of 758,994 eligible registrations were for people with more than one registration. USCIS cites evidence from the FY2023 and FY2024 lotteries. It opened fraud investigations and changed the rule.

From FY2025, USCIS selects by person, so more registrations do not give more chances. In FY2026, the share fell to 2.3%.

To sponsor a worker for a green card, the employer must show that no qualified U.S. worker applied for the job. The employer places job ads and reviews the U.S. applicants.

In FY2025, the worker already worked for the employer on 91.5% of certified filings for professional jobs. For all jobs, the share was 67.1%. The employer tests the U.S. labor market while its sponsored worker already works for it.

6,408 certified filings came from 147 employers that reported a layoff in the area, in the occupation or a related occupation, in the 6 months before the filing.

The DOL approval is for one employer only. A worker who moves to a different employer must start a new case with that employer. The DOL step alone took a median of 483 days. For 90% of filings, it took 510 days or less.