Thought H-1B personnel had it great? Report says Google, Microsoft pay them below par

A majority of the united states H-1B employers, including tech giants like Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft, utilize the short-term work visa programme to pay the migrant personnel well below market wages, a new report has claimed.

The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to hire foreign personnel from countries like India and China in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

Nearly 500,000 migrant staff are employed in america in the H-1B status.

"Among the very best 30 H-1B employers are major US organizations including Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook. All of them take good thing about program rules so that you can legally pay many of their H-1B employees below the neighborhood median wage for the jobs they fill," said the report released by the Economic Policy Institute.

Authored by Daniel Costa and Ron Hira, the report titled "H-1B visas and prevailing wage levels" says 60 per cent of H-1B positions certified by the united states Department of Labor (DOL) are assigned wage levels well below the neighborhood median wage for the occupation.

As the H-1B programme rules allow this, the DOL has the authority to improve it, but hasn't, it said.

While over 53,000 employers used the H-1B programme in 2019, the very best 30 H-1B employers accounted for more than one in four of most 389,000 H-1B petitions approved by the united states Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019, it said.

Half of the most notable 30 H-1B employers use an outsourcing business design to provide staff for third-party clients, rather than employing H-1B workers right to fill a particular need at the company that applies for the visa, the report said.

The report alleged that major US-based technology companies that hire H-1B staff directly, rather than contract them out to third-party employers, had significant shares of their certified H-1B positions assigned as Level 1 or Level 2, both lowest wage levels in fiscal 2019, both which are below the neighborhood median wage.

"Until now, much of the public discourse and proposals for reforming H-1B have centered on rules that would constrain the practices of the outsourcing companies," the report said.

But researches reveal that many businesses that employ H-1B personnel directly, including a few of the biggest names in the technology industry such as for example Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, Salesforce and Uber, pay a sizable share of their H-1B personnel at one of the two lowest wage levels, Level 1 or Level 2.

Furthermore, these direct-hire companies also hire many H-1B staff on a contract basis through outsourcing firms, it added.

Microsoft, the seventh-largest H-1B employer in 2019, assigned one-third (35 %) of its positions on Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) as Level 1 and two-fifths (42 %) as Level 2. Altogether, Microsoft assigned over three-quarters (77 %) of its H-1B positions as Level 1 or Level 2, a wage level below the local median wage.

Microsoft assigned only 18 % of its positions as Level 3 (the median) wage, and a mere three % as Level 4, the only above-median wage level.

Amazon, which appears twice in the H-1B top 30, as "Amazon.com Services" (no. 4 among the largest H-1B employers) and "Amazon Web Services" (no. 27), also assigned almost all its H-1B positions at among the two lowest wage levels.

In line with the report, Amazon.com Services assigned 34 per cent of its H-1B positions as Level 1 and 51 % as Level 2, for a complete of 86 per cent of most positions certified.

Amazon Web Services assigned 47 per cent of its H-1B personnel as Level 1 and 36 % as Level 2. Combined, Amazon.com Services and Amazon Web Services had 12,428 positions certified at Level one or two 2, for a complete of 85 per cent certified at a wage level below the median. Only 1 in eight (1,684) were certified at or above the 50th percentile (Level 3 or Level 4), it said.

Apple, eleventh on the list, assigned 558 of its H-1B positions (two %) as Level 1 and one-third (32 %) as Level 2, for a combined total of 34 per cent at Levels 1 and 2. Apple assigned 32 % as Level 3 and 34 per cent as Level 4.

Google, ranked the fifth-largest H-1B employer, had 9,085 H-1B positions certified by the DOL in fiscal 2019. It assigned not even half of one % of its certified H-1B jobs as Level 1 and 54 % as Level 2. Only 37 per cent of Google's jobs were certified at or above the median wage, the report said.

Facebook assigned only one position as Level 1 and 10 % of its 6,118 total H-1B positions as Level 2. Twenty-five % were certified at Level 3 and 16 % at Level 4. Nearly half (49 per cent) of Facebook's H-1B positions were certified at a wage established by an alternative solution wage survey, so that it is difficult to determine its H-1B wage distribution, it said.

Uber, the 29th-ranked H-1B employer in 2019, had 5,708 H-1B positions certified by the DOL. Significantly less than one % was assigned as Level 1 and just over half (53 %) as Level 2. Just over one-third were assigned as Level 3 and 13 % as Level 4.

While Uber had 5,708 H-1B positions certified by DOL and hired 1,160 H-1B employees in 2019, in the same year, it made headlines by laying off 400 employees.

The report claims that the most notable 30 H-1B employers are actually hiring H-1B workers to fill an extremely large numbers of routine (Levels 1 and 2) positions that want relatively little experience and ordinary skills.