Source DOL OFLC LCA disclosure FY2026 Q3 releaseCompared with BLS OEWS May 2025Status certified filings only
Occupation SOC 19-2012 across the United States
Physicists as filed, SOC 19-2012
748 certified H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 Labor Condition Applications for Physicists (SOC 19-2012) offered a national median annual wage of $98,700. Half fall between $77,030 and $144,087, and the 10th to 90th percentile range runs from $67,018 to $194,374. Source: Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure data, FY2026 Q3 release.
- Median wage filed
- $98,700per year
- Middle half
- $77,030
to$144,087 - 10th to 90th percentile
- $67,018
to$194,374 - Certified filings
- 748
The ledger
National spread of filed wages for SOC 19-2012
Read it carefully. The BLS OEWS national median for Physicists is $172,250. The median filing wage is 43% below the benchmark: 57% of it. The two measure different things: the filings state what employers offered on certified applications, and OEWS reports what employers paid across all workers.
By metro area
Median filed wage in each metro
31 metro areas with at least 5 certified filings for this job. Select a column heading to sort. Metros with their own page link to the percentiles and employers there.
| Metro area | Median filed wage | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | $124,134 | 189 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | $137,960 | 56 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | $99,362 | 48 |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | $90,300 | 38 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | $83,000 | 28 |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | $165,900 | 24 |
| Knoxville, TN | $92,001 | 22 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | $91,502 | 14 |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | $104,999 | 14 |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | $75,000 | 13 |
| Trenton-Princeton, NJ | $83,238 | 12 |
| Ann Arbor, MI | $80,000 | 11 |
| Kansas City, MO-KS | $210,000 | 11 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | $70,050 | 10 |
| Rochester, NY | $74,500 | 10 |
| Pittsburgh, PA | $204,422 | 9 |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | $68,144 | 8 |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | $92,650 | 8 |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | $67,018 | 8 |
| Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA | $77,030 | 7 |
| Madison, WI | $103,048 | 6 |
| Oklahoma City, OK | $78,681 | 6 |
| Rochester, MN | $202,072 | 6 |
| South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI | $71,250 | 6 |
| College Station-Bryan, TX | $57,600 | 5 |
| Durham-Chapel Hill, NC | $86,000 | 5 |
| Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH | $97,760 | 5 |
| Lansing-East Lansing, MI | $99,225 | 5 |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | $145,600 | 5 |
| Omaha, NE-IA | $255,072 | 5 |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | $80,000 | 5 |
By state
States with the most filings
| State | Median filed wage | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| New York | $121,888 | 198 |
| California | $134,000 | 117 |
| Illinois | $99,362 | 52 |
| Massachusetts | $91,500 | 37 |
| Texas | $67,000 | 35 |
| Maryland | $83,000 | 28 |
| Tennessee | $92,250 | 25 |
| New Jersey | $91,592 | 22 |
| Pennsylvania | $91,284 | 22 |
| Virginia | $103,099 | 20 |
By employer
Employers with the most filings
| Employer | Filings |
|---|---|
| Brookhaven National Laboratory | 149 |
| Fermi Forward Discovery Group, LLC | 21 |
| Ut-battelle, LLC (oak Ridge National Laboratory) | 17 |
| Leland Stanford Jr. Univ/SLAC National Accelerator Lab | 16 |
| University of Maryland College Park | 15 |
| Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | 14 |
| The Trustees of Princeton University | 11 |
| University of California, Berkeley | 11 |
| Columbia University | 10 |
| Harvard University | 10 |
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. This page reports public data and is not advice.
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. Likely entry errors are dropped: wages with a missing or unrecognized pay unit, annualized values under $15,000, hourly rates over $1,000, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly amounts that look like annual salaries, and annualized values over $1,000,000 (yearly salaries up to $3,000,000 are kept for physicians and chief or general executives).
- 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.
Open data
Download the dataset
Download the dataset on GitHub. Free CSV files of the wage percentiles on these pages by occupation and metro, employer and state, released under CC0 from DOL OFLC LCA disclosure data.