Last year, the Economic Policy Institute released research showing that the United States’ temporary skilled visa scheme (H1B) was being used by employers to undercut local workers’ wages.
The analysis was based upon the Department of Labor’s Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, which constructed a distribution of wages for each occupation in a specific geographic location.
The OES survey set four categories at 17th, 34th, 50th and 67th percentiles of pay for that location. Thus, if one was hired in the first category as a “Software Developers, Applications” in D.C., then the minimum pay or 17th percentile was $75, 000 while the median or 50% was $117,000.
