H-1B Prevailing Wage Claims vs. Reality:
What They Say, Versus What They Pay

By Robert Hill, CUNY, Murphy Institute for Worker Education

Conclusions

Results indicate that while employers are technically meeting the requirement to pay H-1B workers "at-or-above prevailing wages" for fiscal year 2010, in fact they are choosing prevailing wages that fall primarily between the 25th and 49th percentile ranks. 

• H-1B employees are categorically paid less than U.S. workers for the same work, and we can now see this demonstrated with reliable data.
• 68.30% of H-1B workers in the computer technology sector are paid less than the median wages earned by domestic workers.
• Employers are claiming that they must hire H-1B workers because they can't find U.S. workers, but the numbers show that there are powerful financial incentives for choosing H-1B employees over U.S. workers.
• This is perfectly legal, because the iCert system allows employers to choose these artificially low prevailing wages
• These findings are consistent with previously conducted research by Metcalf (2003) and Miano (2007), showing that even though their source data was questionable their conclusions are upheld.