The Trump administration has banned visa processes till the end of 2020, thus barring the H-1B visa processes as well. Although this ban can be extended if Donald Trump gets re-elected.
This extension can have a substantial impact on the salaries of the H-1B workers currently in the US, especially those with specialized skill sets that companies have great trouble sourcing. It can also lead to more local hiring leading to less demand for H-1B employees.
Dice, a US-based employment website, analysed the data regarding software engineers for the period of October 2019 and July 2020 from the H-1B Salary Database, which indexes the Labor Condition Application (LCA) disclosure data from the United States Department of Labor (DOL).
Let us find out about H-1B workers’ salaries and more at some of the IT giants in the US…
Contents
H-1B Software Engineer Salaries in Top IT Companies of the US, 2019
| Sr. No. | Company | H-1B Software Engineer Median Salary |
| 1 | $138,000 | |
| 2 | Microsoft | $125,000 |
| 3 | Apple | $120,307 |
Median H-1B Software Engineer Salaries in Top IT Companies of the US, 2020
| Sr. No. | Company | H-1B Software Engineer Median Salary |
| 1 | $142,000 | |
| 2 | Microsoft | $143,520 |
| 3 | Apple | $168,000 |
| 4 | Amazon | $145,500 |
| 5 | $167,000 |
As you can see, the salaries have increased and are at par higher than the ‘average’ technologist salary of $94,000 as per Dice’s 2020 Tech Salary report. Although this is approximately equivalent to what these big technology companies pay their software engineers in general.
Entry-Level Software Engineer’s Salaries in Top IT Companies of the US
| Sr. No. | Company | Salary | Bonus | Stock | Total |
| 1 | Google (L3) | $120,869 | $20,234 | $39,482 | $180,585 |
| 2 | Microsoft (SDE) | $ 105,232 | $20,911 | $29,643 | $155,786 |
| 3 | Apple (ICT2) | $125,840 | $17,420 | $24,510 | $167,770 |
| 4 | Amazon (SDE I) | $ 115,471 | $ 21,080 | $ 15,854 | $ 152,405 |
According to a dataset from the U.S. Department of Labor, these IT firms subcontract
H-1B workers of varied specializations ranging from business-services to consulting firms.
As per Dice, the data suggests that the H-1B workers at these subcontracting firms earn significantly less than their counterparts at other companies: At Accenture, the median H-1B salary is of $96,366, at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), it’s $68,000, and at Capgemini, it’s $89,918, at IBM, (business consulting and tech company) it’s $86,653.
When it comes to determining the median or average salary for various H-1B jobs in the secondary market, it becomes highly dim and suspicious, despite attempts by the federal government to force these companies to reveal more.
Final Word
The impact of the ban will be witnessed after a few quarters if the ban gets extended.
Till then, it seems like the tech companies in the US have a demand for H-1B workers and are happy to pay them relatively higher salaries for their skill sets.
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