Career Prospects for H-1B visa applicants

Anurag Nigam
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

Since Trump took the oval office in January 2017, H-1B visa has been in news for some or other reasons. In April 2017, USCIS stopped premium processing for H-1B applications, which forced many applications to wait for their extension approvals and H-1B transfers. Later, USCIS started issuing more RFE’s (request for more evidence) for H-1B visa extension. In this study, I would like to analyze the data of H-1B visa applications, which were filed during the period of 2011–2016. This dataset is available on kaggle.

During 6 year term (2011 to 2016), approximately 3 million H-1B visa applications were filed at USCIS. Out of these 3 million applications, a staggering 130,600 applications were filed by a single employer, INFOSYS LIMITED. Following chart shows the top filers of H-1B visa applications. In the top 5 of this list, all the companies are Indian IT companies. No wonder why Indian IT companies have started getting more RFE’s under Trump administration.

We can also look at the salary offered by the Indian IT companies to their H-1B employees. Following chart shows the average salary offered by the top Indian IT companies in U.S for employees working on H-1B visa. On average these companies offer base salary in the range of 60K to 70K USD annually. Low base salary and large number of applications are the two main reasons that Indian companies have come under the scrutiny of USICS and receiving large number of RFE’s for visa extensions.

Now what are the other career prospects for H-1B visa applicants. For the candidates who are looking for high paying jobs, there are many companies which offer more than 100K base salary. Following chart shows the top 10 highest paying employers for H-1B visa applicants. This list includes only those employers who have filed at-least 1000 H-1B applications during 2011–2016. Netflix is the highest paying company which offer 140K+ base salary. All the companies in this list offer average base salary of 110K or more to H-1B employees.

What are the different fields where H-1B applicants can start their career. Most of the applications are filed in Software Engineering and Hardware Engineering fields. In software engineering, there are many high paying companies. Following chart shows the list of highest paying employers for software engineers. Netflix offers the highest base salary for Software Engineers.

Highest paying employers for Software Engineers

Large number of H-1B visa’s are filed every year in Hardware engineering. This technical field includes the electrical and electronics engineer who work on computer and hardware related domain. Following list shows the highest paying employers in the hardware engineering field. Google and Apple are the two main employers which offers the best salaries for the hardware engineers.

In last 5 years, a lot of growth has been seen in the job market for data science field. Following figure shows the comparison of number of H-1B applications for Software Engineer and Data Scientist during 2011 to 2016. In these 6 years, visa applications for Software Engineer has increased by little more than 2x, where as for data scientist, visa applications have increased by more than 30x.

Data science is another technical field where H-1B visa applicants can see tremendous career growth. Following is the list of highest paying companies for data scientists.

This study analyzes the employers which file H-1B applications in U.S and it clearly shows that Indian IT companies dominates the number of application. Base salary offered by these companies are also sub-par. Above study also shows the list of high paying companies in different technical fields. Hopefully this list can help in candidates for selecting the companies and setting a right expectation for their starting salary. This study emphasizes on the tremendous career prospects for data scientists.

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