Visa & Green Card
H-1B Salary Explorer
Median and percentile H-1B base salaries by job title, metro, and wage level — aggregated from official DOL LCA disclosure data.
Methodology
How these numbers are built
Official DOL filings
Every H-1B job requires a certified Labor Condition Application stating the offered base wage. The DOL publishes these quarterly — that disclosure file is our only input.
Aggregates, not records
We group certified full-time filings by normalized job title, metro, wage level, and year, then publish only the median, 25th/75th percentile, and filing count. Cells with fewer than 10 filings are dropped.
Base salary only
LCA wages exclude stock and bonus. Treat these numbers as the floor of a real offer at large tech employers, and as close to total comp at most services companies.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average H-1B salary by job title?
It varies enormously by title, metro, and seniority. As a rough guide from DOL filings, median H-1B base pay for a Software Engineer runs $115k–$155k depending on the city, Senior Software Engineers $135k–$190k, and Data Scientists $110k–$150k. Use the explorer above to filter your exact title, metro, and wage level.
Where does this H-1B salary data come from?
From the US Department of Labor's quarterly LCA (Labor Condition Application) disclosure files — the official wage data employers must file for every H-1B position. We pre-aggregate millions of rows into medians and percentiles by title, metro, and wage level; no individual filing data is shown.
What do wage levels I–IV mean on an H-1B?
The DOL prevailing-wage system assigns each position a level: I (entry), II (qualified), III (experienced), and IV (fully competent/senior). It's a useful experience proxy when comparing salaries — a Level II Software Engineer and a Level IV one are very different jobs at very different pay.
Is LCA salary data the same as total compensation?
No. LCA filings report base salary only. Stock grants, bonuses, and benefits — often 20–50% of total compensation at large tech companies — are not included, so real take-home packages can be substantially higher than the numbers shown here.