This data is actually public and scrapable. Here’s a (non-official) chart for CA:

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/H1B-Salary--in-Califor...

Considering US DOL didn’t count stock comp for prevailing wage (at least last i checked) it would not surprise me if over 50% do in fact clear 250k in total gross comp

You can Google it. Few people seem to know this and love to argue in circles about what H1bs make but all H1B salary data is public.

You can even search by company and see how much your colleagues make for each job title (no names though)

Strange but true.

Not being hyperbolic, ALL of H1B friends I personally know makes 250+ total comp. Many makes around that in base salary. ( most my friends are late 20 and early 30s )

Are they really doing jobs that Americans wouldn't or couldn't do for that amount? Honestly curious about your opinion, since they are your friends.

Why would companies go through the hassle of getting H1B workers, if they could hire Americans for the same job at the same amount?

Clearly there has to be either a shortage of the type of worker, or the Americans want a higher pay.

Some healthy subset of companies just want to hire the best people they can get that will accept their offer, and sponsoring an h1b is a small part of the overall costs.

Several reasons come to mind including better laborers. But also politics, culturalism, tax incentives, racism, bribery. Employment law has a large share of the legal market, keeping with litigation. We should have no expectation that companies are only hiring for company profit. Employees and managers appear to be, often times, doing what's best for themselves.

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-legal...

As another commenter mentioned you may or may not consider my experience as selection bias. So with that out of the way:

- all H1B friends I know obviously are from work; I used to work at one of the FAANGs - these friends are in late 20s and above, so at least SDE 2 if not more senior - you can verify at levels.fyi that 250+ TC is normal for these roles

I'm interviewing a lot for my company and I recall in the height of the hiring boom that peaked around 21, we really are throwing out 200-300 TCs for fresh graduates, Americans or not

Interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

Selection bias.

H1B salaries are public, but with the caveat that it only includes the base salary. So if you see someone getting paid $170k at Amazon, they actually make $170k + bonus at their level + equity that is almost as big as their salary. You can look at the public salaries, and compare them to the base of what people at their level get at the company they work for using levels.fyi to figure out how much they get paid.