78% of H-1B Employers Offer Above Average Market Wages | Hacker News Reader

78% of H-1B Employers Offer Above Average Market Wages

cato.org

14 pointsoa3357 comments

Pro-immigration Cato Institute is responding to a study from anti-immigration Economic Policy Institute. Cato analyzed data from the Department of Labor and the EPI study, and is making the following arguments:

- 100 percent of H-1B employers offer H‐ 1Bs at least the average prevailing market wage for similar U.S. workers"

- 78 percent of H-1B employers offer wages, on average, above average market wages, 20 percent above

- The lowest skilled H‐ 1Bs were the most likely to receive above market wage offers.

- H-1B employer requests at higher wage levels have doubled since 2010.

- H-1B workers’ median wage was double the U.S. median wage and growing twice as fast as all U.S. wages

These arguments potentially refute the idea that H1B workers are brought in at lower wages.

Wait, they're comparing salaries to the US national median, while H1B workers are concentrated in the most expensive metro areas? Doesn't seem legit to me.

No, the report compares a H1-B salary to the same company the H1-B is employed at.

As a former H1-B: they refute absolutely nothing. The trick is either to hire experienced people into entry level positions (thereby paying them "more than market", and yet at the same time much less than they'd get if they were native - they'd be in senior roles then), or to employ a bunch of people in an Indian sweatshop on US soil, where no sane American will apply due to low pay, discrimination, and horrendous working conditions. Or, indeed, both. It is bizarre for me to see "progressive" people on HN support H1-B abuse, and be against H1-B reform.

Is the Economic Policy Institute actually anti-immigration, or are you claiming that they oppose the H-1B system and are, therefore, “anti-immigration?”

I was wrong, I was conflating them with another think tank, Center of Immigration Studies, which is anti immigration. I'm not sure what EPIs immigration policy recommendations are.

Ah, that makes more sense.

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