Source DOL OFLC LCA disclosure FY2026 Q3 releaseCompared with BLS OEWS May 2025Status certified filings only
What employers attested they would pay.
Every certified H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 Labor Condition Application states a wage. The FY2026 Q3 release of the Department of Labor's disclosure data holds 400,956 of them with usable wages. This ledger lines them up by employer, job and metro, and sets each against the Bureau of Labor Statistics median for the same work.
- Median wage filed
- $126,818per year
- Middle half
- $96,096
to$165,000 - 10th to 90th percentile
- $77,126
to$210,000 - Certified filings
- 400,956
The filings, settled
How 400,956 filings become one distribution
Each dot is a share of the filings.
400,956 certified applications, each stating the wage the employer offered. Each dot stands for an equal share of them, placed on a curve through the published percentiles, not at any one filing's wage. Scattered, they are just paperwork.
Line them up by wage.
Stack the filings on a salary axis and the shape appears: a dense middle, then a tail of higher offers stretching right.
Read the percentiles.
Half of the filings sit between $96,096 and $165,000. The median filing offered $126,818. These rules come from the filings themselves. The dots between them are placed on a curve through those rules.
Against every American job.
The red rule is the BLS OEWS median across all US occupations, $50,980. Filings lean toward professional and technical work, so treat this as context. Matched job by job and metro by metro, the median filing was 2% below the benchmark.
The ledger
Filed wages against all US wages
The top bar is the spread of wages on certified filings. The bar under it is BLS's spread for every worker in every US job. The box holds the middle half; the whiskers reach the 10th and 90th percentiles.
| Measure | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LCA filings (offered) | $77,126 | $96,096 | $126,818 | $165,000 | $210,000 |
| BLS OEWS, all US jobs | $31,200 | $37,590 | $50,980 | $80,520 | $128,560 |
Read it carefully. Matched by occupation and area instead, the median filing was 2% below the benchmark: 98% of the BLS median for the same job in the same place.
By occupation
The jobs employers filed for most
| Occupation (SOC code) | Filings | Filings relative to the top row | US OEWS median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers 15-1252 | 119,646 | $135,980 | |
| Computer Occupations, All Other 15-1299 | 29,305 | $116,580 | |
| Data Scientists 15-2051 | 26,950 | $120,230 | |
| Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers 15-1253 | 12,818 | $104,300 | |
| Computer Programmers 15-1251 | 10,419 | $100,390 | |
| Computer and Information Systems Managers 11-3021 | 8,435 | $175,140 | |
| Industrial Engineers 17-2112 | 8,112 | $102,440 | |
| Computer Systems Analysts 15-1211 | 7,947 | $105,850 | |
| Financial and Investment Analysts 13-2051 | 7,245 | $102,740 | |
| Mechanical Engineers 17-2141 | 7,221 | $104,110 | |
| Accountants and Auditors 13-2011 | 6,213 | $83,680 | |
| Electronics Engineers, Except Computer 17-2072 | 5,930 | $130,220 | |
| Operations Research Analysts 15-2031 | 5,321 | $88,940 | |
| Management Analysts 13-1111 | 5,311 | $101,860 | |
| Electrical Engineers 17-2071 | 5,223 | $120,630 |
By employer
Employers with the most filings
| Employer | Filings | Filings relative to the top row |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 20,053 | |
| 7,421 | ||
| Cognizant | 5,774 | |
| Meta | 5,275 | |
| Ernst and Young | 5,172 | |
| Microsoft | 5,158 | |
| Apple | 4,870 | |
| Infosys | 4,604 | |
| Deloitte | 4,053 | |
| Tata Consultancy Services | 2,876 | |
| JPMorgan Chase | 2,801 | |
| Tesla | 2,610 | |
| NVIDIA | 2,390 | |
| Fidelity | 2,361 | |
| Walmart | 2,174 |
Prevailing wage level
Which wage level employers chose
Each filing names one of four prevailing wage levels for the job and area, from I (entry) to IV (fully competent), under the Department of Labor's wage guidance. Of these 400,956 filings, 19% were at level I, 40% at level II, 21% at level III and 20% at level IV.
Index of filed pages
Every state, and the employers with the most filings
- California
- Texas
- New York
- Washington
- New Jersey
- Illinois
- North Carolina
- Georgia
- Massachusetts
- Florida
- Pennsylvania
- Virginia
- Michigan
- Ohio
- Arizona
- Maryland
- Tennessee
- Connecticut
- Missouri
- Indiana
- Minnesota
- Colorado
- Wisconsin
- Oregon
- Arkansas
- Utah
- South Carolina
- Delaware
- Kansas
- District Of Columbia
- Nevada
- Kentucky
- Iowa
- Alabama
- Nebraska
- Louisiana
- New Hampshire
- Oklahoma
- Rhode Island
- New Mexico
- Idaho
- Mississippi
- West Virginia
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Maine
- Hawaii
- Vermont
- Alaska
- Montana
- Wyoming
- Amazon
- Cognizant
- Meta
- Ernst and Young
- Microsoft
- Apple
- Infosys
- Deloitte
- Tata Consultancy Services
- JPMorgan Chase
- Tesla
- NVIDIA
- Fidelity
- Walmart
- Core Tech Construction Corporation
About the record
What a filed wage is, and is not
A Labor Condition Application states the wage an employer offers for a job and where the work will be done. Certification means the Department of Labor accepted that the filing met its requirements. It does not mean a worker was hired, or was paid that amount. Wages here are annualized from the stated rate, and groups with fewer than 5 filings are not published.
Method
How these numbers are made
Clerk's note. Wages are the bottom of each filing's offered range (WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM), so medians run low against OEWS. Percentiles are unweighted: each certified filing counts once regardless of the number of worker positions requested. Hourly OEWS-only occupations are annualized at 2,080 hours, which BLS does not publish.
Full method notes
- Only applications with case status exactly "Certified" are counted. Withdrawn, denied and certified-then-withdrawn cases are dropped.
- A Labor Condition Application covers H-1B, H-1B1 (Chile and Singapore) and E-3 (Australia) workers. Certification means the Department of Labor accepted the filing; it does not mean anyone was hired or paid that amount.
- Each wage is annualized from the stated rate: hourly times 2,080, weekly times 52, bi-weekly times 26, monthly times 12. Values under $15,000 or over $3,000,000 are dropped as entry errors.
- Percentiles use linear interpolation. Groups with fewer than 5 filings are not published.
- The BLS comparison uses the OEWS median for the same 6-digit SOC occupation in the worksite metro area, or the worksite state when no metro figure exists. The matched ratio is each filing's wage over that median, then the median across filings.
- The dot field on this page is a quantile dot plot: each dot stands for an equal share of the filings and is a modelled position, not a filing's own wage. Between two published percentiles the dots are spaced log-linearly on the normal-score scale, so the curve passes exactly through the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles and every dot stays between the two percentiles that bound it. The data publishes nothing outside the 10th to 90th range, so those dots are extrapolated and drawn hollow. The share of filings above the red rule is read from the same curve.