The H-1B Explorer

Gas stations

Certified labor condition applications filed by gas stations and convenience retail, across hundreds of separate employers.

H-1B is a visa for a speciality occupation requiring at least a bachelor's degree. These are filed under the industry code for filling stations.

The industry code is the employer's own answer. A firm that owns stations and does something else too files under one code for all of it.

Building cleaning and maintenance

Applications in the occupation group that covers janitors, cleaners and groundskeeping.

This is the occupational classification itself, not an industry: the employer named a cleaning or maintenance occupation on the form.

Food preparation and serving

Applications in the occupation group covering cooks, food service managers and serving staff. Panda Express is among the employers in the wider record.

Restaurant work is the standard example of what a speciality-occupation visa is not for.

Personal care and service

Applications in the group covering personal care aides, childcare and related work. The lowest median wage of any occupation group measured here.

A wage at this level is below what the program's critics and defenders both assume is the floor.

Farming, fishing and forestry

Applications in the agricultural occupation group, filed on H-1B rather than on the agricultural visa built for it.

H-2A exists for seasonal agricultural labor and has its own wage rules. These filings did not use it.

Sponsored while holding a tourist visa

Permanent-residence filings where the worker held something that is not work authorisation when the employer filed: a B-2 visitor visa, temporary protected status, parole, or no inspection at all.

The ordinary path runs H-1B then permanent residence. These filings start somewhere else entirely.

Lawful in itself. An employer may petition for someone in any of these positions, and the filing says nothing about how the person came to be in it.

US citizens on permanent-residence filings

Filings that record the worker as a United States citizen, including some born in the United States.

A US citizen cannot need a labor certification. The field is almost certainly mis-keyed, which makes this a defect in a federal disclosure file that nobody had looked for.

A state motor-vehicle agency

The Washington State Department of Licensing sponsored an IT applications specialist for permanent residence in FY2021. The worker was a citizen of Hong Kong, born in Hong Kong. The state Attorney General's office sponsored an Assistant Attorney General the same way in FY2023.

These are posts inside the machinery of a state government, and both are published with the worker's citizenship, the wage and the case number.

One school district, one role, one country

Dallas Independent School District's largest single role is Elementary Bilingual Teacher. The great majority of those filings name Mexican citizens.

A single employer, a single job title, and a nationality distribution that is nothing like the national one. Open the employer on the public-sector page to see every role and who filled it.

Elementary and secondary schools

Certified applications filed by K-12 schools and districts, from thousands of separate employers.

The H-1B debate is conducted almost entirely about technology companies. Public schools are one of the largest filing sectors in the country.