USCIS FY 2020 H1B Data Added, Prevailing Wage New Levels Comparison

In this article, we will cover two key updates, first the update to our H1B database with latest USCIS data and second is update to the feature to compare prevailing wage levels based on the new US department of labor final rule.  

USCIS H1B FY 2020 Data Updated 

 USCIS finally released Complete Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 H1B Approvals and Denials Data earlier in early January 2021. The released data for Fiscal year 2020 has H1B approvals and denials from time period of Oct 1st, 2019 to Sep 30th, 2020.  USCIS fiscal year usually starts on October 1st and ends on Sep 30th. 

We have updated our database and the H1B Sponsors database with that data.  The grades are recomputed to reflect their standings. If you are looking to join a company on an H1B visa or joining a new company and applying  for the upcoming H1B Visa 2022 season, you can use the latest data to make informed decision.  Below is an updated data and grade for Microsoft Corporation.  You can search for your interested company using H1B Sponsors Search 

You can also track our data refresh updates on our Data Refresh Page 

New Prevailing Wage Levels by DOL – Comparison feature

As many of you know, the US Dept of Labor (DOL) published new wage levels in October 2020 and they had to remove them based on court order. Now, they again published a final Rule in Federal Register on Jan 14th, 2021 stating the change in wage levels again. The rule will be effective after 60 days and the wage levels will be implemented in phases.  Below are the wage levels from final rule. 

• Current wage Levels : Level I = 17th Percentile, Level II = 34th Percentile, Level III = 50th Percentile, Level IV = 67th Percentile
• Proposed wage rates by DOL final rule : Level I = 35th Percentile, Level II = 53rd Percentile, Level III = 72nd Percentile, Level IV = 90th Percentile

So far, DOL has not released any new H1B Wage Data for the new wage levels in FLCDataCenter website for us to give comparison with actual data. We continue to wait for the official data from the US Dept of Labor. 

Predicting Approximate  Wage Levels

 In general, we cannot really predict or extrapolate the Percentile based data. The reason is, we need to know the whole distribution of data to be able to do that. Percentile is not the same as percentage. So, if someone says they predicted new H1B wage levels using some algorithm or use fancy terms like Machine Learning or AI then, it is NOT accurate. You cannot predict wage levels without knowing the entire wage data distribution.  You can watch what is Percentile in this YouTube Video

Approximate H1B Wage Levels data for Level 1 and Level 2 

Now that you know, we cannot predict the percentile data, let’s see what we can do now. While we wait for official data, we want to give some approximation for everyone to get an idea of how they may look. 

We are not going to predict anything, we are going to re-use wage data given by DOL to us at the moment. We are going to give approximate data for Wage Level I and Wage Level II as they are closer to previous Wage Levels II and Wage Level III percentile.  So, we have taken those and put them in comparison for you to review. Again, these may be completely different.  Below is what it means. 

• For Wage Level I we are showing 34th percentile data and is close to proposed 35th percentile.
• For Wage Level II we are showing 50th percentile data and is close to the proposed 53rd percentile. 

You can search for a job tile using H1B Prevailing Wages Search and location to see the change. Below is an example for Web Developer in West Tennessee County  

What do you think of the new feature ? Does it help ? Share your thoughts and feedback.