Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about H-1B and LCA data, how h1b.report sources and cleans it, and how to find sponsors, salaries, and trends.
- What is h1b.report?
h1b.report is a free, searchable analytics site for U.S. H-1B visa data, built from public Labor Condition Application (LCA) disclosures published by the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC). It covers roughly 9.3 million disclosures across 17 fiscal years (FY2010–FY2026), 152,000+ unique sponsoring employers, and 782 occupation codes. You can browse employers, occupations, states, and sectors in one place.
- What is an LCA, and is it the same as an H-1B visa?
No — an LCA is not a visa, and a certified LCA is not an approved worker. A Labor Condition Application (LCA) is a wage-and-working-conditions attestation an employer files with the Department of Labor as the first step. After the DOL certifies it, the employer must still file a Form I-129 petition with USCIS, which is a separate process not visible in this dataset. So LCA data shows intent to sponsor at a stated wage, not a final hire.
- Where does the H-1B data come from?
All H-1B data here comes from public LCA disclosure files published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC). The site is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the DOL or USCIS. We reorganize the official records into searchable profiles and rankings; see our methodology for exactly how each field is processed.
- Is h1b.report free to use?
Yes — it is 100% free, with no login, no paywall, no signup, and no scraping limits. The derived dataset is released under a CC0 (public-domain) license, so you can reuse it freely. You can search H-1B sponsors, salary guides, and state breakdowns without an account.
- How do I check if a specific company sponsors H-1B workers?
Search the company on the employers section to see its H-1B sponsorship history. Each employer profile shows filing volume, certification outcomes, top roles, and filed wages drawn from DOL LCA records. Because the raw files list the same company under many spellings, we reconcile those variants into one canonical employer so a single search gives one clean answer.
- Who are the top H-1B sponsors?
The largest H-1B sponsors by LCA filing volume are listed on the top H-1B sponsors leaderboard, which is built directly from DOL disclosure data. They include major IT services firms and large technology employers such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, Amazon, and Google. Rankings update automatically as new filings arrive.
- How can I find H-1B salaries for a specific job?
Use the occupations salary guides, which group filings by standardized SOC occupation code and show median, 25th-percentile, and 75th-percentile prevailing wages. For example, you can look up Software Developers or Data Scientists. The median certified wage across all roles in FY2026 is about $130,000, but it varies widely by occupation and location.
- What is a prevailing wage in H-1B filings?
The prevailing wage is the minimum wage an employer must attest to pay an H-1B worker for a given job and location, based on Department of Labor wage data. It has four skill levels (I–IV), from entry-level to expert. The wage shown on this site is the employer's offered or prevailing wage from the LCA — not actual paid salary — and where a wage range is filed, we use the lower bound.
- What does H-1B certification rate mean?
The certification rate is the share of an employer's LCAs that the Department of Labor certified. It is a DOL wage-attestation outcome, not a USCIS approval rate, so a high certification rate does not mean every worker got a visa. Also note that a "withdrawn" LCA was pulled by the employer and is not the same as a denial. See the cleanest sponsors ranking for employers with high certification rates.
- How do I see H-1B filings by state or city?
The states section breaks filings down by worksite location, with a map and a "per 100,000 workers" intensity toggle so you can compare states fairly by size. You can view high-volume states like California, Texas, or New York, and track year-over-year share movers. Note that location can reflect worksite or registered HQ depending on context.
- Can I compare two employers, occupations, or states side by side?
Yes. The Compare feature places any two entities side by side — two sponsors, two occupations, two states, or two sectors — and produces a shareable URL. This is useful for benchmarking salaries, filing volumes, or certification outcomes between similar employers or roles. It works across all entity types on the site.
- How current is the H-1B data?
The data is updated as the Department of Labor publishes its quarterly LCA releases, usually ingested automatically within 24 hours of publication. The dataset currently spans FY2010 through FY2026. Because DOL releases data on a lag, the most recent fiscal year may still be partial until later quarterly files arrive.
- Does the wage shown reflect what workers are actually paid?
No — the wage shown is the employer's offered or prevailing wage as stated on the LCA, not a confirmed paid salary. Where a wage range is filed, the site uses the lower bound, and hourly wages are annualized at 2,080 hours per year for comparison. Treat the figures as filed wage floors, which are still a useful benchmark when weighing a job offer.
- How does h1b.report clean the raw DOL data?
The raw DOL files list the same company under many spellings, use free-text job titles, mix wage units, and change schema across years. h1b.report reconciles employer name variants into one canonical employer, maps free-text titles to a stable SOC occupation taxonomy, and normalizes every wage to annual USD. The goal is one clean entity equals one answer; full details are in the methodology.
- What is the FY2027 forecast on the site?
The FY2027 forecast is a statistical projection of H-1B filings and median wage, generated with an OLS trend and shown with a high/low range. It is clearly labeled as a projection, not official Department of Labor data, and should be read as an estimate rather than a guarantee. See the forecast section for the current outlook.