H-1B visa holders are among the highest paid workers in the United States

H-1B visa holders are among the highest paid workers in the United States, with their wages being in the 90th percentile of all wages in the country.

This means that H-1B workers receive paycheques that are in the top 10 percent of US earners, American think tank Cato Institute has found in a recent study.

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the median wage for H-1B worker in 2021 was about $108,000.

Compare this to the median wage for all US workers in 2021 – $45,760.

H-1B wage growth has exceeded the growth for all US workers. From 2003 to 2021, the nominal median H-1B wage grew 52%, while the nominal median for all US workers grew just 39%, Cato noted.

This is the first time since DHS started reporting H-1B wages in 2003 that H-1B wages have surged above the 90th percentile.

DHS held its annual H-1B lottery earlier this month to allocate the 85,000 work visas to high skilled foreign workers. Though the exact number of entrants is not clear, once again, demand for H-1B workers far exceeded the cap.

For the 2022 fiscal, USCIS received 308,613 H-1B registrations for the 85,000 visas available. Indian IT companies have been the largest recipients of these visas.

David J Bier, research fellow at Cato Institute, on a blog post said, that in reforming the green card process, Congress should not ignore the massive economic benefits from the H-1B programme—which is the initial on-ramp for the vast majority of skilled green card applicants. “The latest wage data only further confirm the urgency of raising the H-1B cap and making hiring foreign workers easier,” he wrote.