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Comment by basicallydan | Hacker News Reader

Can anybody tell me why wage offer and prevailing wage don't match up? Is there some kinda limit on what an immigrant can be paid?

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H1-B workers can only be paid at or above prevailing wages in the area per Department of Labor stats. This is set in the law as to avoid displacing US workers.

Haha, having worked in the Indian offshoring industry for the last 9 years, I can only say that this is a joke. At least 100 of my co-workers have moved to US with wages much less than their American counterparts.

"Prevailing wages" is one of those statistics that can often be surprising. The bottom line is that some businesses, sample size and definitions of how the jobs are aggregated can drag the average down.

If you classify someone as a "Web Developer" then they will fall in bracket that is ~55% of the "Computer Programmer" bracket (this data is by County so it varies a lot by geography).

AL programmers are paid from 61k to 95k. SF programmers are basically 20+k higher.

This can also be the reason you see a company having multiple disparate titles or changing them seemingly at random.

Well most American employers do take this very seriously. I've typically been offered salaries well past the prevailing wage.

Oh, I see! So the "prevailing wage" column is the one that is the wage in the area. I understand now. I misunderstood it to mean "the wage which they actually were able to get after being employed".

Cool. Thanks for the explanation!

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