The two H-1B economies: Google offers a $184,000 median, Infosys $92,581
- The H-1B program runs two labor markets. In fiscal 2025 the median offer was $184,000 at Google, $170,500 at Microsoft, and $152,100 at Amazon, against $92,581 at Infosys, $89,898 at Wipro, and $85,634 at Tata Consultancy Services. The $120,000 median across all employers splits the two groups exactly.
- The volume has flipped. Infosys certified 33,398 applications in fiscal 2015, more than any product company ever has; it filed 5,740 in 2025. Amazon passed Infosys in 2020 and led all employers with 22,720.
- Cognizant is the exception that maps the middle: its median offer climbed to $109,782, closest to the program median among the big services firms, and it kept the most volume of them, 11,086 applications.
What's happening
The chart draws the median offered salary on certified H-1B applications for six of the program's largest employers, from Department of Labor filings. In 2008 all six sat between $50,710 (Infosys) and $102,200 (Google). They have separated into two bands since. The product companies now offer $152,100 to $184,000 at the median; the IT-services firms offer $85,634 to $92,581. No line crosses between the bands.
The median across all employers, $120,000 in fiscal 2025, runs through the empty middle. Every product company in the chart sits above it; every outsourcing firm sits below it, and has fallen further below it since 2017.
The volume moved to the high end
Through the mid-2010s the wage gap coexisted with an outsourcer-dominated program. Fiscal 2015 was the high-water mark: Infosys certified 33,398 applications, Tata Consultancy Services 16,450, and Wipro 11,975 in one year. The decade since reversed the flow. By fiscal 2025 those three filed 5,740, 7,832, and 2,218, while Amazon grew from 7 applications in 2009 to a peak of 23,392 in 2022. The full turnover is visible year by year in the top-25 employer race.
The causes stack rather than compete: petition scrutiny and denial rates rose for third-party-placement roles in the late 2010s, the services firms moved more delivery offshore and hired more US staff, and the product companies kept expanding through the same years. Whatever the weights, the result in the filings is one program with two economies, and the growth all on the expensive side.
What to watch
The $100,000 petition fee announced in September 2025 lands in fiscal 2026 files, and it prices the two bands differently: at Tata Consultancy Services' median offer it exceeds a year's salary; at Google's it is about half of one. Watch whether the low-offer side of the program shrinks again, the way it did after 2015. Watch Cognizant, whose median has climbed to within $10,218 of the program median, for whether the surviving services model converges on product-company pay. And watch the all-employer median itself: part of its rise is the mix shifting toward employers who pay more.
Common questions
Which companies offer H-1B workers the most?
Do outsourcing firms pay below the legal wage floor?
Why did Infosys, TCS, and Wipro cut their filings?
Are these the salaries workers actually earn?
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