H-1B Wage Levels

The wage level you assign a position used to be a compliance detail. Now it decides whether your candidate gets a shot at the cap at all.

In the FY 2027 H-1B lottery, the first run under wage-weighted selection, only 17.7% of selected registrations sat in the lowest wage category, and properly submitted registrations fell 38.5% year over year. The Department of Labor (DOL) has separately proposed raising every level by 20% or more.

This guide covers how the four levels are defined, how to determine the right one for a role, and how DOL and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) each test your choice.

What are H-1B wage levels?

H-1B wage levels are the four salary tiers the U.S. Department of Labor uses to set the minimum wage you can legally pay a foreign worker in a given occupation and location. Each level maps to a fixed percentile of local wages for that job.

The level you select drives the prevailing wage on your labor condition application (LCA). You then pay the higher of that figure or your actual wage, meaning what you already pay your own employees doing the same work. Since February 2026, the level also determines how many entries a registration gets in the H-1B lottery.

How the four wage levels are defined

The level you land on reflects how much experience, judgment, and independence the job actually requires. The H-1B wage level percentiles come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, broken out by standard occupational classification (SOC) code and metro area.

DOL’s worksheet starts every position at Level I and adds a point for each factor that exceeds the baseline: experience beyond the ONET specific vocational preparation (SVP) range, education above the ONET requirement, special skills or licenses, and supervisory duties.

Your total determines the level. Because O*NET ranges differ by occupation, the same five years of experience can land at Level II in one job title and Level III in another.

How wage level became a selection issue

Your registration strategy changed the day the Department of Homeland Security’s H-1B wage based selection rule took effect, on February 27, 2026.

Under this weighted system, each unique beneficiary enters the pool based on the highest OEWS level the offered wage meets or exceeds: four entries at Level IV, three at Level III, two at Level II, and one at Level I.

Registration now captures the SOC code, the area of intended employment, and the wage level. Every H-1B registration remains beneficiary-centric, so multiple employers registering the same person produce one weighted entry rather than several.

The petition you later file has to correspond to the level claimed at registration, and cap petitions filed since April 1, 2026 must include the source material behind that level.

The results were immediate. Registrations dropped from 343,981 to 211,600, and 71.5% of selected beneficiaries held U.S. advanced degrees, up from 57% the prior year.

How to determine the H-1B wage level for a role

You build the wage level from the job itself, not from the salary you had in mind. Work through this in order, because each step feeds the next:

1. Open the OFLC wage search. The DOL Online Wage Library, run by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC), holds the OEWS wage data H-1B employers are required to use. There is no official H-1B wage level calculator, and third-party salary sites are not a substitute.
2. Pick the SOC code from duties, not the job title. The library returns the H-1B wage level by SOC code, so the code has to match the actual work. Choosing Computer Programmer when the job is genuinely software development is one of the most common triggers for a request for evidence (RFE).
3. Compare against O*NET. Pull the O*NET profile for the occupation and check the actual requirements against your job description, especially the SVP range.
4. Select the industry category and worksite. Enter the place where work is performed. For remote employees that is the home address, not your headquarters, and multi-site roles anchor to the lowest applicable wage across locations.
5. Score the position on the DOL worksheet. Document each factor you counted and why.
6. Confirm the offered wage clears the level. The offered wage must meet or exceed the prevailing wage figure the search returns for that level.

How DOL and USCIS each evaluate your choice

Your wage level has to satisfy two agencies that look at the same number for different reasons, and clearing one does not clear the other.

DOL asks whether you paid what you promised. Certification of your LCA is largely a completeness check, so the real test comes later, during an investigation comparing payroll against the certified wage.

USCIS asks whether the level is credible. Officers read your wage level against the duties in the petition, and a Level I wage paired with a description full of advanced technical responsibility invites the argument that the role is either overstated or not a specialty occupation at all.

Enforcement and compliance risk in 2026

Scrutiny has moved from the wage figure you chose to the story around it. The H-1B Level 1 wage RFE is the clearest example: Level I petitions have drawn requests for evidence at roughly double the rate of Level III petitions.

Officers now treat a mismatch between duties and level as a potential misrepresentation rather than a judgment call. Site visits reinforce this. Officers verify the worksite, interview the employee separately from company representatives, review payroll, and check whether the work being done matches the level claimed.

Consulting and staffing firms see higher visit rates because third-party placements make the employer’s day-to-day control harder to demonstrate.

Important note: Prior approvals no longer settle the question. Extensions and amendments are being re-examined against current standards, so review the level whenever a role changes materially.

H-1B prevailing wage increase 2026: what DOL has proposed

Your future filings may cost considerably more. On March 27, 2026, DOL published a proposal to raise all four levels across H-1B and PERM. The current percentiles have held since 2005.

DOL’s own figures put the average Level I wage at $73,279 today and $97,746 under the proposal, a 33% increase, with Level II rising about 24%. The agency justified the change by finding that the average wage offered to H-1B workers ran roughly $10,191 below the OEWS average.

Comments closed May 26, 2026, and no final rule has issued, so nothing has changed yet. One exception is worth planning around: DOL has proposed applying the new figures prospectively, to wage determinations pending on the effective date and to LCAs filed after it, leaving approved LCAs and existing PERM determinations alone.

Employer checklist

Your defense of a wage level is only as good as the file behind it. Build the record before you register, not after an officer asks:

• Document the SOC selection: Keep a short memo tying the chosen code to specific job duties and the O*NET profile.
• Save the wage evidence: Retain the OFLC wage search results with the date, worksite, and level, or the H-1B prevailing wage determination if you requested one from the National Prevailing Wage Center.
• Align the paperwork: Confirm the offer letter, job description, LCA, and petition describe the same role at the same level.
• Escalate early: Bring in counsel before registration when duties are hybrid, the worksite is a client site, or the level sits at the boundary between two tiers.

How wage levels compare to market salaries

The prevailing wage you owe is a floor, not a market rate. Level I sits at the 17th percentile, which means 83% of local workers in that occupation earn more, and Level III only reaches the median.

For compensation planning, that gap cuts two ways. Paying at the floor is legal but now costs you lottery odds, while paying at the market rate for competitive roles like software developers often lands you at Level III or IV anyway.

Reading the data by occupation and geography

Your numbers change with the map. Because OEWS data is local, the same job carries different figures in different metros, and a role that qualifies as Level II in one market may require a materially higher salary in another. Check the specific area of intended employment rather than a national average wage.

Occupation matters just as much. High-demand technical roles cluster at the upper levels because their O*NET education and experience baselines are already high, while support and analyst roles concentrate at Levels I and II, which is where weighted selection bites hardest.

The takeaway

The wage level is no longer a box you fill in at the end of a petition. It determines your odds in the lottery, your salary floor, and how hard USCIS looks at the rest of your filing, so decide it deliberately and keep the evidence that supports it.

How Lighthouse helps you set and defend a wage level

If you are planning cap-season hiring, the wage level decision now sits at the front of the process rather than the end, and it has to hold up twice: once at registration and again on the petition.

Lighthouse prepares H-1B petitions with attorney review included in every case, starting with a free initial eligibility evaluation of the role, the SOC code, and the wage level.

We work with HR and people ops teams to keep the job description, the labor condition application, and the petition telling one consistent story, which is what determines whether a wage level survives scrutiny.

Start your H-1B evaluation today.

Frequently asked questions on H-1B wage levels

What are the H-1B wage levels?

You choose from four tiers set by DOL at the 17th, 34th, 50th, and 67th percentiles of local wages for an occupation. They correspond to entry, qualified, experienced, and fully competent positions.

What is L1, L2, and L3 in H-1B?

These are shorthand for the Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 wage levels you select on your LCA. L1 is entry-level at the 17th percentile, L2 covers qualified workers at the 34th, and L3 is the local median for experienced professionals.

Do current H-1B visa holders have to pay $100,000?

No. If your employee already holds H-1B status, the September 2025 proclamation never reached them. It covered only certain new petitions for beneficiaries abroad.

A federal court vacated the policy on June 8, 2026, and the First Circuit declined to restore it during the appeal on July 24, 2026. The merits of that appeal are still undecided.

Are H-1B salaries higher?

Not necessarily. DOL found the average offered wage ran about $10,191 below the OEWS average for comparable occupations, which is the gap the proposed rule is designed to close for your future filings.