The mechanism appears to be mobility restriction creating monopsony conditions.
When workers can't easily change jobs (employer-specific visa, 60-day rule),
employers can offer below-market wages.
Used OFLC disclosure data, filtered to computer occupations (SOC 15-xxxx).
Happy to discuss methodology. Built an interactive calculator for people to
check their specific situation.
The title of the original post is "Analysis of 2.4M H-1B records shows $50k annual wage gap between employer types". That's not at all what the HN title conveys. The specific wage discrepancy is by "employer type", not some general discrepancy.
The section on geography is better.
The section about specific employers doesn't seem to go anywhere toward an analysis of wage discrepancy. It's just a statement about concentration and a hand-wavy extrapolation to wage discrepancies.
There has always been this argument that allowing H1bs to switch jobs easily and clearing the green card backlog for India will increase labor liquidity in the market which may in turn result in higher wages for local and foreign population.
Employers don't want this. Policymakers also don't want this because higher wages (for everyone) may put inflation pressure. Instead, the middle ground is to have employers have their way by having hostage labor, while at the same time, keep spreading hate for H1bs so that local population doesn't feels alienated by policymakers.
I am guessing you have detailed data as you took 3 months to put it together. I suggest regressing wages on various employer-, employee-, and job-specific characteristics. That analysis will be more insightful. Also, comparing this wage delta across employers who are subject to the H1B cap and those who are cap exempt (e.g., non-profit universities) would make your story more compelling. Your analysis suggests that the wage delta would be small or 0 for cap exempt employers. Btw, you could consider this as a characteristic of employers and include it as a binary (1/0) variable in the regression model. Just my 2 cents.
I think the job titles (Tax #3) are particularly damming. As the post mentions, H1B Specialty Occupations require Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.
The jobs titles many WITCH firms are submitting for are just not specialized at all -- Developer, analyst, whatever. I personally fail to see how this could possibly qualify for a H1B visa when there are 10s of millions of employees in the US matching these vague descriptions.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 24.5 ms ] threadKey findings: - Product companies median: $150k - Staffing companies median: $99k - Annual gap: $50,950 (compounds to $305,700 over 6 years)
The mechanism appears to be mobility restriction creating monopsony conditions. When workers can't easily change jobs (employer-specific visa, 60-day rule), employers can offer below-market wages.
Used OFLC disclosure data, filtered to computer occupations (SOC 15-xxxx).
Happy to discuss methodology. Built an interactive calculator for people to check their specific situation.
The title of the original post is "Analysis of 2.4M H-1B records shows $50k annual wage gap between employer types". That's not at all what the HN title conveys. The specific wage discrepancy is by "employer type", not some general discrepancy.
The section on geography is better.
The section about specific employers doesn't seem to go anywhere toward an analysis of wage discrepancy. It's just a statement about concentration and a hand-wavy extrapolation to wage discrepancies.
Employers don't want this. Policymakers also don't want this because higher wages (for everyone) may put inflation pressure. Instead, the middle ground is to have employers have their way by having hostage labor, while at the same time, keep spreading hate for H1bs so that local population doesn't feels alienated by policymakers.
The jobs titles many WITCH firms are submitting for are just not specialized at all -- Developer, analyst, whatever. I personally fail to see how this could possibly qualify for a H1B visa when there are 10s of millions of employees in the US matching these vague descriptions.