H-1B Visas in the USA: Who Benefits, Who Competes, and What the Evidence Shows

The H-1B visa program is one of the most consequential and controversial parts of the United States’ employment-based immigration system. It allows American employers to hire foreign professionals for specialized jobs that generally require at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in a specific field. The program is particularly important in technology, engineering, scientific research, healthcare, and higher education.

Supporters argue that H-1B workers help U.S. companies innovate, fill difficult-to-staff positions, establish new businesses, and remain competitive internationally. Critics argue that the program can give employers access to workers with less bargaining power, put downward pressure on wages in some occupations, and disadvantage American workers when employers recruit abroad instead of raising salaries or investing in domestic training.

Both perspectives contain elements supported by evidence. The central issue is not simply whether foreign professionals benefit the economy, but under what conditions their employment complements American workers, when it may substitute for them, and how effectively the program’s safeguards are enforced.

A crucial distinction is that an H-1B visa is temporary work authorization, not permanent residence or citizenship. Some H-1B workers eventually obtain green cards and become U.S. citizens; others leave the country, change immigration status, or remain temporarily employed.

1. How Large Is the H-1B Program?

The H-1B program is larger than its annual visa cap might suggest because most approvals are not for new workers entering the program. They include extensions, renewals, and other continuing employment petitions.

According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of government data, approximately 400,000 H-1B applications were approved in fiscal year 2024. Of these, 258,196 were for continuing employment and 141,207 were for initial employment.

Type of employment	Approvals in FY 2024	Approximate share
Continuing employment	258,196	64.6%
Initial employment	141,207	35.4%
Total	399,403	100%

Source: Pew Research Center, What We Know About the H-1B Visa Program.

These figures count approvals, not necessarily unique workers entering the United States for the first time.

For ordinary private-sector employers, the annual statutory allocation generally includes 65,000 regular-cap places and 20,000 additional places for qualifying beneficiaries with U.S. advanced degrees. This is commonly called the 85,000 cap.

Certain employers, including qualifying universities and nonprofit or government research organizations, are exempt from the cap. Extensions for existing H-1B workers also generally do not consume a new cap place.

This distinction matters: total annual approvals should not be presented as 400,000 newly admitted workers, and the 85,000 cap is not a limit on every H-1B petition.

2. Which Companies and Industries Use H-1B Workers?

H-1B employment is concentrated in technology and other professional occupations, but the program is not exclusive to Silicon Valley.

Technology and Internet Companies

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are prominent employers of specialized foreign professionals. Roles include software engineering, cloud computing, machine learning, cybersecurity, data science, and product development.

IT Consulting and Outsourcing

Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro have used H-1B workers for software implementation, enterprise systems, application maintenance, and client consulting.

These companies’ staffing and consulting models differ from those of businesses that hire foreign professionals primarily for their own internal research and product development. That distinction matters when evaluating recruitment practices and potential effects on domestic workers.

Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotechnology

Pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, hospitals, and medical research organizations employ eligible specialists, including researchers, statisticians, biomedical engineers, and certain physicians.

Universities and Research Institutions

Universities and qualifying research organizations hire faculty members, postdoctoral researchers, scientific specialists, and other eligible professionals. Some are exempt from the annual H-1B cap.

Engineering, Finance, and Professional Services

Semiconductor firms, financial institutions, manufacturers, and consulting businesses employ eligible engineers, quantitative analysts, economists, accountants, and other specialized professionals.

The Largest Employers

Pew Research Center’s analysis found that Amazon was the employer with the most H-1B approvals each year from 2020 through 2023. It received more than 11,000 approvals in fiscal year 2023, approximately 3% of all H-1B approvals that year.

Other prominent employers included Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Google. Three of the ten largest employers in 2023 had direct or historical ties to India.

Source: Pew Research Center’s H-1B analysis.

Employer data records petitions and approvals, not simply the number of individual foreign professionals working in America. One worker may appear in multiple years of renewal data, and large companies may file thousands of petitions. Approved petitions should not be treated as unique workers or as evidence of an equivalent number of American jobs displaced.

3. What Are the National Origins of H-1B Workers?

H-1B workers come from many countries, but the program is heavily concentrated in two countries of birth: India and China.

Pew Research Center’s analysis of USCIS data for fiscal year 2023 found the following distribution among approved H-1B workers.

Country or region of birth	Share of approvals
India	73%
China	12%
All other countries combined	15%

Source: Pew Research Center, March 2025.

India accounted for nearly three-quarters of approved workers in 2023, while China accounted for about one in eight. No other country of birth represented even 2% individually in that year’s data. India has accounted for a majority of H-1B approvals every year since 2010.

Several factors help explain the concentration:

• Education and technical labor markets: India has a large population of English-speaking graduates in computer science, engineering, and related fields.
• Recruitment networks: U.S. technology companies and Indian IT-services firms have established recruitment pipelines connecting Indian universities, employers, and American clients.
• International business models: IT consulting companies frequently move specialized personnel between countries to deliver projects for U.S. customers.
• Existing immigration networks: Established professional and family networks can help new workers find employers and navigate immigration procedures.

These factors help explain the pattern, but they do not mean every H-1B worker from India or China has the same qualifications, salary, or employment circumstances.

It is also important to distinguish country of birth from citizenship, ethnicity, or the country where someone received their degree.

4. How Many H-1B Workers Become Permanent Residents or U.S. Citizens?

This is one of the most important questions, and one for which the public data have a significant limitation.

An H-1B worker may eventually obtain lawful permanent residence—a green card—and later become a U.S. citizen. However, there is no single, regularly published official statistic that reliably tracks the entire journey from an individual’s first H-1B approval through permanent residence and naturalization.

The Pathway From Temporary Employment to Citizenship

The typical pathway may involve three stages:

1. H-1B temporary employment: The individual works in a qualifying specialty occupation for a sponsoring employer.
2. Employment-based green card: The individual may obtain permanent residence through categories such as EB-1, EB-2, or EB-3. Many cases require employer sponsorship and labor certification, although exceptions exist.
3. U.S. citizenship: After meeting the applicable requirements, a green-card holder may apply for naturalization, generally after five years as a permanent resident.

These stages are separate. A person can hold H-1B status for years without becoming a permanent resident. A green-card holder can remain a permanent resident without ever applying for citizenship.

How Many Obtain Green Cards?

The United States grants employment-based green cards through categories such as EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3. H-1B workers commonly transition through these categories, but the categories also include people who entered through other immigration pathways.

Consequently, the annual number of employment-based green cards granted is not the number of former H-1B workers who became permanent residents that year.

Several factors complicate the calculation:

• Applicants may wait years for a green card, particularly in oversubscribed employment-based categories.
• A worker may change employers, immigration status, or green-card category during the process.
• Some workers become permanent residents through a family-based or other immigration route.
• Some H-1B workers leave the country before obtaining permanent residence.

India’s substantial share of H-1B approvals also matters because employment-based immigrant visas are subject to per-country limits, contributing to long waits for some Indian applicants.

How Many Become Citizens?

Naturalization data are similarly difficult to connect to prior H-1B status. USCIS publishes annual naturalization statistics, but these do not provide a comprehensive cohort count showing how many people who initially entered through H-1B status later became citizens.

A person may naturalize five or more years after receiving a green card. Naturalizations in a given year therefore cannot be divided by H-1B approvals from that same year to calculate a meaningful conversion rate.

The defensible conclusion is that H-1B status can be an important route into long-term U.S. residence, but a reliable single percentage of H-1B holders who become green-card holders and then citizens cannot be calculated from headline annual program statistics alone. Such a calculation would require linked longitudinal immigration records, with clearly defined cohorts and time periods.

Recent Policy Developments

Changes in federal immigration policy can affect the transition from temporary employment to permanent residence. For example, restrictions on employment-based labor certification can delay or interrupt certain green-card cases without necessarily terminating an individual’s existing H-1B status.

Because litigation and regulatory actions change, readers should consult USCIS and the Department of Labor for the latest official guidance before relying on claims about current restrictions.

5. What Are the Rules for Issuing H-1B Visas?

The H-1B system is an employer-sponsored program, not a general visa for any foreign worker who wants to work in the United States.

Requirement	What it means
Specialty occupation	The job generally must require specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor’s degree in a directly related specific specialty, or its equivalent.
Employer petition	A U.S. employer generally files Form I-129 with USCIS for the prospective worker.
Wage protections	Employers must generally pay at least the higher of the actual wage paid to similarly qualified employees or the applicable prevailing wage.
Labor Condition Application	The employer files an LCA with the Department of Labor and attests to specified wage and working-condition requirements.
Annual cap	Most cap-subject private-sector cases are subject to the 65,000 regular cap and the additional 20,000 U.S. advanced-degree exemption.
Duration	Initial H-1B approval is generally available for up to three years, with extensions commonly allowing a total of six years, subject to exceptions.
Employer and job changes	A material change in employment or a move to another employer may require a new or amended petition, although portability provisions can allow eligible workers to begin new employment after filing.

Sources: U.S. Department of Labor H-1B guidance, USCIS H-1B information, and Pew Research Center.

The Purpose of Wage Protections

Wage rules are designed to prevent employers from using foreign labor simply to pay less than they would have to pay comparable American workers.

However, the existence of a wage rule does not guarantee that every H-1B worker earns the same amount as every American doing similar work. Salaries differ by experience, occupation, geography, seniority, and employer. Prevailing-wage calculations and compliance enforcement are therefore central to whether the safeguards work as intended.

Employers may also have additional obligations, including recordkeeping and, in certain circumstances, restrictions on placing H-1B workers at third-party worksites. Additional statutory requirements apply to some employers with large numbers of H-1B or L-1 workers.

Selection and Enforcement

Demand for cap-subject H-1B places has often exceeded supply, so USCIS uses registration and selection procedures. Reforms implemented for the FY 2025 registration process moved toward selecting beneficiaries rather than allowing multiple registrations for the same individual to multiply their chances.

The modernization rule effective January 17, 2025, also changed aspects of specialty-occupation eligibility, employer obligations, and program integrity.

The Department of Labor and USCIS can investigate violations and impose penalties where appropriate. These enforcement mechanisms are important because the economic impact of H-1B employment depends not only on how many workers receive approval but also on the integrity of recruitment, wages actually paid, and the ability of workers to change employers.

For current requirements, consult the official USCIS H-1B page and the Department of Labor’s H-1B program page.

6. What Is the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program?

The economic case for H-1B visas has several dimensions: productivity, innovation, business expansion, wages, consumer prices, and the distribution of opportunities among workers. These effects are not identical, and a policy can increase overall economic output while imposing costs on some employees.

Potential Economic Benefits

1. Filling specialized positions

Employers may need expertise in fields such as semiconductor engineering, cybersecurity, advanced computing, biotechnology, and quantitative finance. When qualified workers are scarce, international recruitment can help projects proceed that might otherwise be delayed, reduced, or moved abroad.

2. Increasing productivity and business output

Skilled workers can complement domestic employees by bringing specialized knowledge, enabling teams to develop products faster or improve business processes. Their spending also creates demand for housing, services, and other goods.

3. Supporting innovation and entrepreneurship

Foreign-born scientists, engineers, and founders contribute to the U.S. research and business ecosystem. H-1B status is one route through which international professionals work in American companies and research institutions, although not every immigrant innovator entered through this visa.

4. Supporting downstream industries

When a technology business becomes more productive, the gains may spread to its suppliers, business customers, and other industries that use its products.

A 2026 working paper by Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, Ahmet Gulek, and Jens Hainmueller, published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, examined the long-run effects of H-1B exposure using the expansion of the visa cap in 1999–2003.

The researchers found that greater H-1B exposure increased incomes for native-born workers and pre-existing immigrants, with gains concentrated in non-STEM occupations. They also found positive spillovers to downstream industries, although no direct effect on patenting in their analysis.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2026 working paper.

The study is evidence that the program can produce benefits beyond the foreign workers who receive visas. However, it examines a particular historical expansion and does not prove that every H-1B hiring decision has the same effect.

Potential Economic Costs and Risks

1. Wage pressure in directly competing occupations

If an employer can hire a foreign worker for less than it would otherwise need to pay a comparable domestic worker, the program can weaken wage bargaining in some jobs. The magnitude depends on the occupation, employer, local labor market, and how closely workers substitute for one another.

2. Displacement of American workers

In some circumstances, an employer may use foreign recruitment to replace or avoid hiring domestic employees. This concern is particularly significant when workers have similar skills and employers can readily substitute one for another.

3. Dependence on employers

H-1B workers’ immigration status is generally tied to qualifying employment. Losing a job can therefore create immigration uncertainty and pressure to find another employer within the applicable time limits. That dependence may discourage some workers from challenging unfair treatment or negotiating more assertively.

4. Unequal distribution of gains

Employers, consumers, skilled immigrants, and complementary workers may benefit, while some domestic employees in directly competing roles may face more competition. Even when total economic output rises, the gains are not necessarily distributed evenly.

5. Reduced incentives to train domestically

Critics argue that ready access to foreign specialists can weaken incentives for some employers to invest in training American graduates or improve compensation to attract domestic candidates. Whether this happens on a significant scale is an empirical question that varies across employers and occupations.

What Do the Economic Studies Say?

Three studies help illustrate why the evidence should not be reduced to a simple claim that H-1B visas either create jobs or take them away.

Abramitzky, Boustan, Gulek and Hainmueller (2026)

Their NBER working paper found that historical increases in H-1B exposure raised incomes for native-born workers and earlier immigrants, particularly in non-STEM occupations, with benefits spreading to downstream industries. The study did not find a direct effect on patenting.

Source: NBER working paper.

Bound, Khanna and Morales (2017)

Their model of the 1994–2001 period estimated that, without the expansion of high-skilled immigration, wages for U.S. computer scientists would have been 2.6%–5.1% higher and employment in computer science for U.S. workers would have been 6.1%–10.8% higher in 2001.

However, immigration also increased IT output by an estimated 1.9%–2.5%, lowered prices, and benefited complementary workers and firms.

These are historical, model-based counterfactual estimates, not predictions for today’s labor market.

Source: NBER, Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S..

Borjas (2026)

An NBER working paper reported that H-1B workers earned, on average, 16% less than comparable native workers in the data analyzed. This finding raises questions about bargaining power and wage protections, but an observed wage gap alone does not establish that the visa program caused the entire difference. Unobserved productivity, job characteristics, and other factors may matter.

Source: NBER working paper.

These studies examine different periods, data, and outcomes. They should not be combined into one numerical estimate of the H-1B program’s overall economic impact.

The National Academies’ broader 2017 review of immigration research also concluded that immigration’s long-run effects on wages for native-born workers overall are generally small, while effects can differ for groups that compete more directly with immigrant workers. That review covers immigration more broadly, not just H-1B visas.

Source: National Academies, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.

7. What Is the Impact on American Employment?

The most useful distinction is between the overall employment rate and employment within a particular occupation.

If a company hires a foreign software engineer, that worker might fill a position that would otherwise remain vacant, help a team grow, or take a position that a U.S. engineer could have filled. The effects can differ substantially across these scenarios.

Employment outcome	What the evidence suggests
Overall U.S. employment	Broad immigration research finds little evidence of a large, persistent negative effect on native-born workers’ overall employment rates.
Directly competing occupations	Displacement and wage pressure are possible, especially when foreign and domestic workers have similar skills and employers can readily substitute between them.
Complementary occupations	Domestic employees may benefit when foreign specialists increase productivity, expand output, or create demand for other professional services.
Long-run business growth	Greater productivity and lower costs can help businesses expand, but the magnitude depends on industry conditions and how employers use the additional labor.
Domestic training and recruitment	The effect is uncertain and can vary by employer; strong wage rules and enforcement are important safeguards.

Sources: National Academies’ immigration review and the H-1B-specific studies discussed above.

Why the Employment Question Remains Contested

Critics often point to company layoffs alongside large numbers of H-1B approvals as evidence that American workers are being displaced. Such cases deserve scrutiny, but the coexistence of layoffs and visa petitions does not, on its own, prove that one caused the other.

A company may be restructuring one division while hiring specialized workers for another, or it may indeed be substituting foreign workers for domestic employees. Determining which explanation applies requires evidence about the jobs, qualifications, timing, wages, and recruitment process.

A rigorous assessment should examine whether employers advertised genuine positions, considered qualified domestic applicants, paid required wages, and complied with the law. It should also distinguish a new hire from a renewal, and distinguish an individual worker’s employment from a company’s total workforce changes.

8. What Policy Changes Could Improve the Program?

A balanced approach need not choose between unrestricted H-1B hiring and eliminating the program. Several reforms could help preserve the benefits of international recruitment while addressing risks to domestic and foreign workers.

1. Strengthen wage protections. Wage requirements should reflect actual skill levels, local labor markets, and comparable positions. Enforcement should deter employers from using the program to undercut prevailing compensation.
2. Improve recruitment transparency. Employers should retain clear records of job advertisements, domestic recruitment efforts, hiring decisions, and the reasons a particular candidate was selected.
3. Increase enforcement where risks are greatest. Targeted audits of employers with concerning patterns—such as repeated labor violations, questionable job postings, or unexplained differences in compensation—could help direct resources where they are most useful.
4. Reduce unnecessary dependence on one employer. Clear rules and practical pathways for eligible workers to change employers can reduce vulnerability to exploitation without eliminating employers’ legitimate ability to sponsor workers.
5. Measure domestic employment effects directly. The government could publish better linked, anonymized data on new hires, renewals, wages, occupations, green-card transitions, and subsequent employment outcomes.
6. Support domestic education and training. Employers and policymakers can invest in STEM education, apprenticeships, reskilling, and partnerships with universities so that international recruitment complements rather than replaces the development of American talent.

There are trade-offs. More stringent rules and higher costs may discourage abusive practices, but they can also make it harder for smaller businesses, research institutions, and legitimate employers to recruit scarce talent. A well-designed system should distinguish genuine skill shortages and productive recruitment from attempts to obtain cheaper labor.

9. Sources and Further Reading

The following primary sources and research publications provide a basis for examining the statistics and arguments in this article.

1. Pew Research Center — H-1B program data. Detailed figures on approvals, renewals, country of birth, major employers, occupations, and salaries.
   Read the March 2025 analysis
2. USCIS — H-1B Employer Data Hub. Official employer-level H-1B petition and approval data.
   Explore employer data
3. U.S. Department of Labor — H-1B program. Wage obligations, labor condition requirements, employer responsibilities, and enforcement developments.
   Read the official program guidance
4. National Academies — The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (2017). A major evidence review covering wages, employment, productivity, and fiscal effects. Its findings concern immigration broadly, rather than H-1B alone.
   Read the summary of findings
5. Bound, Khanna and Morales — Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S. (2017). An economic model examining historical effects on computer-science wages, employment, output, prices, and complementary workers.
   Read the working paper
6. Abramitzky, Boustan, Gulek and Hainmueller — Long-Run Effects of H-1B Immigration on the U.S. Economy (2026). Recent research on native incomes, productivity, and effects transmitted through industry supply chains.
   Read the working paper
7. George J. Borjas — The H-1B Wage Gap, Visa Fees, and Employer Demand (2026). Research on wage differences between H-1B workers and comparable native workers, and how employer demand responds to visa fees.
   Read the working paper
8. USCIS — H-1B specialty occupations. Official information about current eligibility and petition requirements.
   Read the official guidance