Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio). Official U.S. Senate portrait.
Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) has introduced legislation that would raise the salary threshold that lets H-1B-dependent employers skip their obligation to recruit American workers first, moving it from a fixed $60,000 to roughly $140,000 and indexing it to national wage growth every year after. The bill targets the companies that rely most heavily on the visa, mainly IT outsourcing and staffing firms, and it reopens a question Congress has left alone for nearly three decades: when should a company built on H-1B labor have to show it looked for Americans first? The measure, called the Protecting American Workers Through H-1B Modernization Act, was introduced Oct. 6 and has no listed cosponsors. Its odds this session are long, but the number it puts on the table may outlast the 119th Congress.
Why a 28-year-old number suddenly matters
Most debates over H-1B policy focus on the front door: the annual lottery, the 85,000-visa cap, and, since September 2025, the $100,000 payment imposed by presidential proclamation on certain new petitions, which has drawn legal challenges. Husted’s bill operates somewhere less visible. It deals with what happens after an employer is already in the program, and specifically with a carve-out that has quietly grown wider every year simply because wages went up and the law did not.
The mechanism dates to the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998. That law created a category called the “H-1B-dependent employer” and required those companies to make additional promises to the Department of Labor that ordinary H-1B sponsors do not make. Congress let those provisions lapse briefly, then made them permanent in the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004. The $60,000 figure was written into the statute and never indexed.
The arithmetic tells the story. When the threshold was set, the Social Security Administration’s National Average Wage Index stood at about $28,900, so $60,000 was roughly double the average American paycheck. The index for 2024, the most recent year published, was about $69,850. Had the 1998 line simply tracked wage growth, it would sit near $145,000 today. Even adjusted only for consumer price inflation, it would be somewhere around $115,000 to $120,000. In real terms, the threshold has lost about half its value.
Meanwhile, H-1B pay has moved well past it. USCIS’s annual reports on H-1B petition characteristics have put median reported compensation for approved beneficiaries above $100,000 in recent years, and computer-related occupations account for roughly two-thirds of approvals. In practice, a line meant to separate high-end specialists from everyone else now separates almost no one.
What the threshold actually controls (and what it doesn’t)
The single most common misreading of this bill is that it would set a $140,000 minimum salary for H-1B workers. It would not.
Every H-1B employer, dependent or not, must already pay at least the higher of the actual wage it pays similar workers or the prevailing wage for the occupation and location. Husted’s office describes no change to that rule.
The $60,000 figure instead decides whether a particular hire at a dependent employer is “exempt” from three additional attestations:
- Non-displacement. The employer will not lay off a U.S. worker in an essentially equivalent job within 90 days before or after filing an H-1B petition.
- Secondary displacement. Before placing an H-1B worker at a client site, the employer will ask whether the client has displaced, or intends to displace, its own U.S. workers.
- Recruitment. The employer took good-faith steps to recruit U.S. workers and offered the job to any U.S. applicant who was equally or better qualified.
Those are the strongest worker-protection provisions in the H-1B statute. They are also the ones that disappear for any worker paid at least $60,000 a year or holding a master’s degree or higher in a field related to the job.
Who counts as “H-1B-dependent”
Dependency is a ratio test based on full-time-equivalent employees:
| Total full-time-equivalent workforce | Dependent if H-1B workers number at least |
|---|---|
| 25 or fewer | 8 |
| 26 to 50 | 13 |
| 51 or more | 15% of the workforce |
Employers found to have committed willful violations or misrepresentations in the prior five years are subject to the same extra rules regardless of their ratio.
The large employers that clear the 15 percent bar are concentrated in IT services, consulting and staffing, the business model in which a firm sponsors workers and places them on client projects. That is why the bill, though narrow on paper, reaches the part of the program that has generated the most sustained criticism from both the left and the right.
The question the announcement leaves open
Husted’s office has described only the salary prong. The bill text was not publicly available as of Wednesday, and the announcement says nothing about the second route to exemption: the master’s degree.
That omission may matter more than the headline number. In our analysis, if the degree exemption survives untouched, a dependent employer could continue to classify any worker with a related master’s degree as exempt at any salary above the prevailing wage. The new $140,000 line would bite mainly on bachelor’s-level hires. Holders of advanced degrees already make up a large share of H-1B beneficiaries, roughly half or more in recent USCIS data, and the share at large outsourcing firms varies widely.
A bill that raises the salary bar while leaving the degree route open could also change hiring patterns in a way its sponsor may not intend, nudging staffing firms toward sponsoring more workers with U.S. or foreign master’s degrees. That would shift who gets hired without necessarily reducing reliance on the visa. Earlier bipartisan reform efforts, including versions of the Durbin-Grassley H-1B and L-1 reform bill, sought to tighten the exemptions more broadly. Whether Husted’s text addresses the degree prong is the first thing practitioners will check when it is published.
How this fits with the other H-1B moves this fall
The bill lands in an unusually busy stretch:
- Late September: An executive order directed federal agencies to weigh an employer’s layoffs at multiple points in the H-1B process.
- Oct. 1: Texas House Republicans filed a bill to multiply the civil penalties for willful H-1B violations, which Immigration Analytics examined Monday.
- Oct. 6: Husted’s threshold bill.
The two congressional proposals share a premise, that key dollar figures in the 1998 law have gone stale, but they pull different levers. The House bill raises the cost of breaking the rules after the fact. Husted’s bill expands the number of hires that must clear the rules in the first place. Taken together, they suggest a policy direction that is less about cutting H-1B numbers and more about tightening the conditions attached to the employers that use it most.
The case for and against
Supporters’ argument: An unindexed threshold has hollowed out protections Congress deliberately created. Restoring the original intent, a bar roughly twice the average wage, simply puts the law back where it started. Indexing ends the need for Congress to revisit the number every few decades. And the burden falls on a defined group of companies that chose a business model built on the visa.
Critics’ likely argument: No industry group has publicly responded yet, but the objections are predictable. Compliance with recruitment and displacement attestations adds paperwork, advertising costs and legal exposure, and some of that would pass through to the banks, insurers, retailers and government agencies that hire outsourcing firms. Firms may argue the change penalizes companies for their structure rather than for misconduct, and that client companies, not vendors, often drive staffing decisions. Some economists also note that recruitment attestations are difficult to enforce, so the practical effect may be more documentation than hiring change.
Both positions have a factual basis. Whether the result is an overdue correction or a costly formality is the policy judgment Congress would have to make.
What happens next
Realistically, very little this year. The bill has no cosponsors, the midterm elections are less than a month away, and the 119th Congress ends in early January 2027. Stand-alone immigration bills introduced this late in a session rarely reach a vote.
The more durable effect is likely to be agenda-setting. With the White House, House Republicans and now a Senate Republican all targeting 1998-era H-1B figures, an indexed salary threshold is a plausible candidate for inclusion in a broader package in the next Congress. It is also the kind of change that could draw bipartisan interest, since tightening obligations on outsourcing firms has had supporters in both parties for years.
Questions readers are asking
Does this bill raise the minimum salary for H-1B workers to $140,000?
No. H-1B workers must still be paid the higher of the actual or prevailing wage. The threshold only determines whether an H-1B-dependent employer must follow extra recruitment and non-displacement rules for a given hire.
Would this affect companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon?
Generally not. Large technology companies typically sponsor many H-1B workers in absolute terms but fall well below the 15 percent dependency ratio. The bill mainly reaches IT outsourcing and staffing firms whose workforces are heavily H-1B.
Why $140,000?
The bill sets the threshold at twice the Social Security Administration’s National Average Wage Index, recalculated annually. With that index near $70,000, the line lands around $140,000. The 1998 figure was originally set at roughly the same multiple.
What about workers with a master’s degree?
Unclear. Current law exempts dependent employers’ workers who hold a related master’s degree or higher, regardless of pay. Husted’s announcement does not say whether the bill changes that, and the full text was not yet available.
I’m an H-1B worker. Does this change my status?
No. The bill creates no new obligations for workers, does not change wage requirements, and would not affect existing visas. Its effect would fall on how dependent employers recruit and staff new positions.
When would it take effect?
Not before it passes both chambers and is signed into law, which is unlikely before the current Congress ends. It could be reintroduced in 2027.
What employers should do now
Nothing changes legally today, but preparation is cheap. Companies near the dependency ratios should confirm their status regularly, since ordinary hiring and attrition can push a firm across the line. Dependent employers should identify how many current H-1B workers are exempt only through the $60,000 salary prong, because those are the positions an enacted version would most directly affect. And they should make sure degree documentation is complete for anyone claimed as exempt through the master’s route, since that prong may become the main remaining path to exemption.
Sources: Office of Sen. Jon Husted, press release, Oct. 6, 2026; 8 U.S.C. 1182(n) and Department of Labor regulations at 20 CFR Part 655, Subpart H; Social Security Administration, National Average Wage Index series; USCIS, annual reports on characteristics of H-1B specialty occupation workers.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice. Please consult an immigration attorney about your specific situation.
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