According to the analysis, the maximum number of H-1B visas approved from 2010 to 2016 went to employers in the New York City metro area.
College Station metro area of Texas, which is home of Cognizant’s US headquarters, has had the highest H-1B visa approvals per 100 workers from 2010 to 2016, according to a recent analysis by Pew Research Center.
“When looking at the footprint of high-skilled foreign workers by metro area, College Station, Texas, stands far above the rest, with about 32 H-1B approvals per 100 workers,†according to the report. “By comparison, no other metro area had more than five H-1B approvals per 100 workers.â€
The analysis revealed that almost all the approved work visas in the area went to Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp – more than 99 percent to be precise. In total, the metro area received 37,800 H-1B visa approvals during the above mentioned years, the latest data that is available.
Following College Station, San Jose leads in terms of the number of the work visa approvals per 100 workers in a metro area. From 2010 to 2016, the city received 22,200 H-1B visas, with a rate of two approvals per 100 workers.
Talking about the maximum number of approvals overall, New York City ranks highest with about 247,900 work visas granted in the above said years. The area got 29 percent of the total H-1B visa approved across the country. In total, more than 859,600 were issued by the US government during the fiscal years from 2010 to 2016.
The report also mentioned that about 49 percent of the work visas went to beneficiaries with an advanced degree. The beneficiaries of the country’s most popular work visa program earned an average salary of $80,600 during these years.
“Bridgeport, Connecticut, had the highest average salary ($100,200) of any metro area, followed by Seattle ($98,100) and Phoenix ($97,100). In College Station, the Texas metro area with the greatest concentration of H-1B workers in its workforce, the average salary in 2010-2016 was $82,600,” according to the report.
1 Comment
There’s a serious problem with the Pew study. It appears to be looking at the site of the company headquarters, not of the workers. If you go to the app listed as my WebSite URL, select “EMPLOYER_NAME & EMPLOYER_CITY” for “Group by” and enter “COGNIZANT TECH” (without the quotes) for “Employer Name”, you will see COLLEGE STATION listed. However, if you change “Group by” to “EMPLOYER_NAME & WORKSITE_CITY”, you’ll see that the worksite cites for which Cognizant made the largest requests for H-1B workers were Teaneck, NJ (3570), Chicago, IL (1919), Hartford, CT (1791), Los Angeles, CA (1613), San Ramon, CA (1559), and Irving, TX (1469). Hence, the workers seem to be located all over the U.S., not chiefly in Texas.
Finally, if you remove the “Employer Name” and change “Group by” to “WORKSITE_COUNTY” you’ll see that Santa Clara County, CA had the highest request for workers (113,039), more than double that of New York County (55,774). Of course, Santa Clara having requested the most workers does not necessarily mean that they had the most approved. But it does suggest that the Pew study is looking at EMPLOYER_CITY, not WORKSITE_CITY. The latter is where the workers will actually be located and are the city against whose labor force they should be compared.