In 2022, the program’s highest point, H-1B visa holders made up roughly 0.269% of all U.S. jobs. H-1B workers are heavily concentrated in early-career tech and STEM jobs. This concentration matters: although H-1B workers represent only a fraction of the national workforce, they are disproportionately employed in entry-level and junior professional roles, where competition for positions is tighter and substitution between domestic and foreign workers is more direct. Although there is no precise data (only income and job titles are reported), multiple sources predict that H1-B visa holders may account for close to 1% of entry-level jobs, significantly higher than the 0.269% total.
Hmm the 2002 Visa holders is the only point that is far under the 25% mark even tho it is over 32%. Looks like someone wanted to make a point by not having a point.
Edit: indian Visa holders. Its manipulated to make it look like the ‘other’ categorie is way more than it actually is.
When did enshitification gain a foothold?
What this data fails to report is that the entry level jobs are driven by students who are hired on OPT and then get a h1b. This analysis will benefit a lot if school admissions by country is also provided. My hypothesis is that we will see a direct correlation between indian origin students in STEM courses who are then hired as entry level workers and are recipients of h1b
Yea it gets very tough to get actual numbe over the years. Especially since overtime, h1b visa holders can get put under a different visa/greencard, let alone if any of their spouses or family members can work in the usa.
Edit: let alone what another commenter said about students using opt for initial entry level employment. Probably, much worse number than the graph in general.
Interesting where it spikes and trends downwards
We should restrict the amount of H1-B from India
It’s important to point out that the intention for H1-B visas is for highly skilled professionals that are under-represented in the native workforce. They were never meant for entry-level talent, but they’ve been heavily abused by tech companies to help keep wages low and create a class of indentured workers, since the visa is tied to their employer.
With the recent glut of layoffs in the tech industry and the threat of generative AI to tech industry professionals and other knowledge workers, there’s a surplus of native talent in the workforce. But, aside from the astronomical visa fees imposed by the Trump administration (which really just preserves the pool of visas for the big tech companies who will still save more than the visa costs by hiring internationally), little has been done to curtail the H1-B abuse. The H1-B needs serious reform. (So does the rest of US immigration policy, but that’s not the focus here.)
Fuck this and fuck the h1b program
H1-B’s are based IMO. They’re meant to fill in high-skilled labor gaps that domestic workers can’t fill. And they’re essentially a brain drain on the country of origin:
Their origin country paid to develop them into the worker they are now. And we get to cherry pick the good ones and yank them at their most productive point without having to take on any of that initial investment/risk.
Looks like we just need individual country caps
Despite China having about the same population as India, there are far more Indians than Chinese people on H-1B visas. The same is true for the number of people getting green cards. Twice as many Indians get green cards every year as Chinese people. Of course, Chinese GDP per capita is almost 5 times that of Indian GDP per capita, and Chinese median age is 10 years older than Indian median age. What is notable is that despite a long history of British colonization, only a small minority of Indians are proficient in English.
Elon Musk is in favor of massively increasing the amount of H1bs in America.
The chuds here think they know better than the richest man in the world? Obviously increasing immigration is a good thing.
As an American IT worker originally, I fucking hate it. The last big place I worked as IT was doing their O365 migration and overnight the building turned into Little Mumbai, half didn’t even speak English.
OP is there any data on what industries they are in and what positions they hold?
Canadians look at this btw and want them, for “diversity”. I kid you not one time on Reddit a liberal said “80-90% of h1b holders are one race, that’s a good thing for diversity” when I was talking to them.
Oh god this again. The reason Indians are over represented in active H1Bs is because Indians remain on H1B status much longer (decades). This is because other nationalities transition to green cards, but with the country caps, Indians and Chinese have very long wait times for green cards. The Chinese wait time is about 6 years and the Indian wait time is ~13 years and rising.
Food for thought:
If the H1B visa is truly intended to attract and retain the “best and the brightest” in rare skills from across the world – why do we help structure the program to reflect that.
It seems there should be smart people who are globally distributed and we should perhaps put limits on certain countries to cap at a fixed percent or be in line with their Percentage of global population.
Otherwise you can just get situations with biases, familiarity with the system, etc can overlook true talent at the expense of what is “known” or “easy”
One country here is 18% of the world population – but apparently 70% of the global pool of talent. And when you break it down further – it’s mostly men from a subset of regions.
It goes beg the question if they system is just better aligned to serve that subgroup – or if it’s actually talent based
First, I think the “Others” should also have the percent and number labels inside the column. Second, and I guess maybe this is a dumb question, but this is newly approved per year not cumulative active visa holders, right? Or is it always the same, like do the visas get re-approved each year? So in the year 2022, there were a total of 442k H1B visa holders overall? Or in 2022, there were 442k new visas in addition to however many there already were the year before?
Based on this thread it seems like Trump just needs to approve of open borders illegal immigration to solve the immigration crisis.
I moved to the States on an L1 in 2005 and watched this play out. Everyone – EVERYONE – in the tech industry knew this was happening. Completed gaming of the system by a few giant contractor vendors that would enter 10x as many applications as there were visas knowing that each placed visa contractor was a cash cow for them. These jobs being filled were not rare or required special skills, they were just cheaper to fill with visas and kept salaries lower for the rest of the folks. The system has been a fraud for decades.
![[OC] Active H1-B Visa Holders in the U.S. by Country of Origin (FY2000 - 2024)](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/bdgud69xvs4g1-1920x863.png)
22 comments
Source: [https://www.uscis.gov/](https://www.uscis.gov/)
Tool: JavaScript
In 2022, the program’s highest point, H-1B visa holders made up roughly 0.269% of all U.S. jobs. H-1B workers are heavily concentrated in early-career tech and STEM jobs. This concentration matters: although H-1B workers represent only a fraction of the national workforce, they are disproportionately employed in entry-level and junior professional roles, where competition for positions is tighter and substitution between domestic and foreign workers is more direct. Although there is no precise data (only income and job titles are reported), multiple sources predict that H1-B visa holders may account for close to 1% of entry-level jobs, significantly higher than the 0.269% total.
Hmm the 2002 Visa holders is the only point that is far under the 25% mark even tho it is over 32%. Looks like someone wanted to make a point by not having a point.
Edit: indian Visa holders. Its manipulated to make it look like the ‘other’ categorie is way more than it actually is.
When did enshitification gain a foothold?
What this data fails to report is that the entry level jobs are driven by students who are hired on OPT and then get a h1b. This analysis will benefit a lot if school admissions by country is also provided. My hypothesis is that we will see a direct correlation between indian origin students in STEM courses who are then hired as entry level workers and are recipients of h1b
Yea it gets very tough to get actual numbe over the years. Especially since overtime, h1b visa holders can get put under a different visa/greencard, let alone if any of their spouses or family members can work in the usa.
Edit: let alone what another commenter said about students using opt for initial entry level employment. Probably, much worse number than the graph in general.
Interesting where it spikes and trends downwards
We should restrict the amount of H1-B from India
It’s important to point out that the intention for H1-B visas is for highly skilled professionals that are under-represented in the native workforce. They were never meant for entry-level talent, but they’ve been heavily abused by tech companies to help keep wages low and create a class of indentured workers, since the visa is tied to their employer.
With the recent glut of layoffs in the tech industry and the threat of generative AI to tech industry professionals and other knowledge workers, there’s a surplus of native talent in the workforce. But, aside from the astronomical visa fees imposed by the Trump administration (which really just preserves the pool of visas for the big tech companies who will still save more than the visa costs by hiring internationally), little has been done to curtail the H1-B abuse. The H1-B needs serious reform. (So does the rest of US immigration policy, but that’s not the focus here.)
Fuck this and fuck the h1b program
H1-B’s are based IMO. They’re meant to fill in high-skilled labor gaps that domestic workers can’t fill. And they’re essentially a brain drain on the country of origin:
Their origin country paid to develop them into the worker they are now. And we get to cherry pick the good ones and yank them at their most productive point without having to take on any of that initial investment/risk.
Looks like we just need individual country caps
Despite China having about the same population as India, there are far more Indians than Chinese people on H-1B visas. The same is true for the number of people getting green cards. Twice as many Indians get green cards every year as Chinese people. Of course, Chinese GDP per capita is almost 5 times that of Indian GDP per capita, and Chinese median age is 10 years older than Indian median age. What is notable is that despite a long history of British colonization, only a small minority of Indians are proficient in English.
Elon Musk is in favor of massively increasing the amount of H1bs in America.
The chuds here think they know better than the richest man in the world? Obviously increasing immigration is a good thing.
As an American IT worker originally, I fucking hate it. The last big place I worked as IT was doing their O365 migration and overnight the building turned into Little Mumbai, half didn’t even speak English.
OP is there any data on what industries they are in and what positions they hold?
Canadians look at this btw and want them, for “diversity”. I kid you not one time on Reddit a liberal said “80-90% of h1b holders are one race, that’s a good thing for diversity” when I was talking to them.
Oh god this again. The reason Indians are over represented in active H1Bs is because Indians remain on H1B status much longer (decades). This is because other nationalities transition to green cards, but with the country caps, Indians and Chinese have very long wait times for green cards. The Chinese wait time is about 6 years and the Indian wait time is ~13 years and rising.
Food for thought:
If the H1B visa is truly intended to attract and retain the “best and the brightest” in rare skills from across the world – why do we help structure the program to reflect that.
It seems there should be smart people who are globally distributed and we should perhaps put limits on certain countries to cap at a fixed percent or be in line with their Percentage of global population.
Otherwise you can just get situations with biases, familiarity with the system, etc can overlook true talent at the expense of what is “known” or “easy”
One country here is 18% of the world population – but apparently 70% of the global pool of talent. And when you break it down further – it’s mostly men from a subset of regions.
It goes beg the question if they system is just better aligned to serve that subgroup – or if it’s actually talent based
First, I think the “Others” should also have the percent and number labels inside the column. Second, and I guess maybe this is a dumb question, but this is newly approved per year not cumulative active visa holders, right? Or is it always the same, like do the visas get re-approved each year? So in the year 2022, there were a total of 442k H1B visa holders overall? Or in 2022, there were 442k new visas in addition to however many there already were the year before?
Based on this thread it seems like Trump just needs to approve of open borders illegal immigration to solve the immigration crisis.
I moved to the States on an L1 in 2005 and watched this play out. Everyone – EVERYONE – in the tech industry knew this was happening. Completed gaming of the system by a few giant contractor vendors that would enter 10x as many applications as there were visas knowing that each placed visa contractor was a cash cow for them. These jobs being filled were not rare or required special skills, they were just cheaper to fill with visas and kept salaries lower for the rest of the folks. The system has been a fraud for decades.
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