Every H-1B row on this site comes from a Labor Condition Application, or LCA. An employer files one with the Department of Labor before it can file an H-1B petition, and the department publishes the details each quarter. They are public records and useful ones, but they do not say quite what most people assume.
The wage is a promise on a form
The wage on an LCA is what the employer attests it will pay for that position. It is base pay. Bonuses, stock and sign-on money are not included, so the figure can sit far below total compensation at companies that pay heavily in equity.
Hourly wages are converted to a yearly figure at 2,080 hours, so a contractor's filing may look like a salary when the person is paid by the hour. Some filings also give a range, and our tables show the low end.
A filing is not a hire
An LCA comes before the visa petition. The employer may file one for a role it never fills, and the petition that follows can be denied or never submitted. One person can also appear several times, because extensions and amendments need their own filings. So the number of filings is a measure of employer activity, and we would not use it to count workers.
What the status means
Certified means the department accepted the application, which is a check on the form and carries no judgment on the person. Nearly everything is certified. Denied is rare, at about 0.5% of filings in FY2026 so far. Certified - Withdrawn means the employer pulled a certified application. Withdrawn means it pulled the application before a decision. In our status reports, medians use certified filings and leave the plain withdrawn ones out.
What the year means
H-1B years here are federal fiscal years, which start on October 1, so FY2026 began in October 2025. The newest year is usually partial, because the department publishes the file quarter by quarter. Green card records work differently: we group them by the year they were filed, and they only appear once decided, so the newest green card years look almost empty.
Mistakes to avoid
The most common one is comparing a single filing to your own pay. Use the median of many filings for the same title and location. Another is trusting a job title too far, since employers write these freely and one company's Senior Engineer is another's Engineer II. Also watch for very large employers with several legal entities: Amazon files under separate companies, so one company page may not show the whole picture.
If you want a starting point, try the top job titles or read how to check a job offer with this data. Our about page explains how we process the records.