How the H-1B figures are made

The files, and what a row is

The Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification publishes a disclosure file for every quarter: each Labor Condition Application it decided, with the employer, the job and its occupation code, the first worksite, and the offered and prevailing wages. This hub reads every file from FY2024, to FY2026 to June 2026. A row is an application, not a worker: the Department certifies an application, and USCIS decides the employer’s petition afterwards, so a certified application is not a hire and not a visa.

Each file lists the decisions of its quarter. When an employer withdraws an application after it was certified, the withdrawal is listed again in the later quarter’s file; such a case is counted once, in the year it was certified, as “certified, then withdrawn” (50,594 across the years read, with those withdrawn in the quarter they were certified). The hub’s counts of certified applications are of those still standing.

A file can also list the withdrawal of a certification from an earlier year, which our rows cannot fold: it is from before the first year read, or the earlier file does not list it. Such a withdrawal is counted apart, not in the year it is listed, since the Department’s published count of certified applications matches ours only without such withdrawals (10,589 H-1B applications in FY2025); the Department does not say so itself. With that rule the count of certified applications over all three visa classes agrees with the Department’s Selected Statistics for the closed years it publishes.

The offered wage

The wage is the one the employer offered on the application, which states a range or a single figure and its unit: a year, a month, a week or an hour. A median here is over certified full-time applications paid by the year, using the lower end of the range, the floor the employer attested to: 492,684 of the 529,460 certified in FY2025. An hourly or monthly rate is never converted to a year, and every median is printed with its count.

Occupations and places

An occupation is the first six digits of the Standard Occupational Classification code the employer filed, named by the title filed with it most. A place is the first worksite an application names; an application can name up to ten. 0 certified applications in FY2025 carry no usable occupation code and are in no occupation’s figures.

Small counts

A count of certified applications, and a count of worker positions, from 1 to 10 is not shown: the page says it is withheld to protect a count under 11, and does not rank it. Its employers, its full-time offers and its median are withheld with it, since each would give the count back. A median is shown only over 11 or more full-time offers paid by the year. Where a total is printed beside its parts, a part is withheld with the withheld one if the parts that print would otherwise give it back.

An occupation whose certified count is withheld in every fiscal year has no page of its own, because the page would hold nothing but its name. Of the 587 occupations, 334 have a page and 253 do not; the applications of those without one are in every national and state total.

What is never shown

The files name each employer’s contact, its attorney or agent and the person who prepared the form, with emails and telephone numbers, and the employer’s tax number. None of those columns is read for a page. Employers are counted by the tax number inside the query and no page shows it. The Department says errors in the data may be the filer’s.

What this data cannot show

• A certified Labor Condition Application is not a hire and not a visa: the Department of Labor certifies it, and USCIS decides the petition afterwards.
• The wage is the offered wage on the application, on its own unit, not what a worker was paid. A median is over certified full-time applications paid by the year, using the lower end of the offered range.
• A worksite is the first one a case names; a case may name up to ten.
• Employers write their own applications, and the Department says errors in the data may be the filer’s. No employer contact, attorney, preparer or tax number is shown.

Sources

• LCA Disclosure Data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3) — U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Foreign Labor Certification · Public domain: materials created by the federal government "may be used, reproduced and distributed without permission", credited to the U.S. Department of Labor, without implying its endorsement. · Updated: Quarterly