Physicians on H-1B visas
Every employer sponsoring a physician on an H-1B must file a Labor Condition Application naming the job, the worksite and the salary offered. 8,302 physician filings from 4556–4593 — where they are, what they are paid, and how that compares to everyone else in the same specialty.
Pay, against everyone else in the specialty
Median salary offered on the filing, against the national median wage for that specialty. A positive figure means sponsored roles are advertised above the going rate.
Difference from the national median
| Specialty | Filings | Share | Median offered | National median | Difference | Per 1,000 providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal Medicine | 2,186 | 26.33% | $279,000 | $257,000 | +9% | — |
| Physicians, all other | 2,128 | 25.63% | $280,000 | $266,000 | +5% | — |
| Pediatrics | 538 | 6.48% | $225,000 | $210,000 | +7% | — |
| Family Medicine | 517 | 6.23% | $240,000 | $244,000 | -2% | — |
| Cardiology | 491 | 5.91% | $494,000 | $496,000 | +0% | — |
| Surgery (general and other) | 435 | 5.24% | $438,000 | $559,000 | -22% | — |
| Neurology | 383 | 4.61% | $305,000 | $249,000 | +23% | 1013.23 |
| Radiology | 365 | 4.4% | $400,000 | $421,000 | -5% | — |
| Anesthesiology | 331 | 3.99% | $420,000 | $391,000 | +7% | — |
| Psychiatry | 325 | 3.91% | $270,000 | $282,000 | -4% | 4.83 |
| Pathology | 139 | 1.67% | $277,000 | $312,000 | -11% | — |
| Emergency Medicine | 112 | 1.35% | $356,000 | $336,000 | +6% | — |
| Obstetrics & Gynecology | 111 | 1.34% | $300,000 | $293,000 | +2% | — |
| Nurse Practitioner | 70 | 0.84% | $133,000 | $132,000 | +0% | 1.21 |
| Physician Assistant | 60 | 0.72% | $132,000 | $136,000 | -3% | — |
| Orthopedic Surgery | 57 | 0.69% | $500,000 | $359,000 | +40% | — |
| Dermatology | 27 | 0.33% | $400,000 | $329,000 | +22% | — |
| Ophthalmology | 27 | 0.33% | $293,000 | $300,000 | -3% | — |
"Per 1,000 providers" counts filings against every provider the registry lists in that specialty. It is a rate of filings, not a share of physicians — see below.
Where the filings are
Share of physician filings by state
| State | Filings | Share | Median offered | Per 1,000 providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 818 | 9.85% | $265,000 | 69.01 |
| Florida | 460 | 5.54% | $281,000 | 58.23 |
| Massachusetts | 384 | 4.63% | $268,000 | 71.7 |
| California | 378 | 4.55% | $281,000 | 26.53 |
| Pennsylvania | 369 | 4.44% | $290,000 | 77 |
| Illinois | 339 | 4.08% | $323,000 | 84.52 |
| Ohio | 329 | 3.96% | $309,000 | 73.65 |
| Texas | 315 | 3.79% | $288,000 | 38.68 |
| Arizona | 226 | 2.72% | $275,000 | 75.43 |
| Georgia | 226 | 2.72% | $303,000 | 78.83 |
| North Carolina | 222 | 2.67% | $300,000 | 64.52 |
| West Virginia | 220 | 2.65% | $328,000 | 482.46 |
| Connecticut | 199 | 2.4% | $263,000 | 77.16 |
| Michigan | 197 | 2.37% | $241,000 | 68.26 |
| Alabama | 192 | 2.31% | $260,000 | 171.28 |
| Louisiana | 190 | 2.29% | $321,000 | 130.58 |
| Iowa | 184 | 2.22% | $319,000 | 172.93 |
| Wisconsin | 183 | 2.2% | $324,000 | 101.39 |
| Indiana | 181 | 2.18% | $270,000 | 108.25 |
| Maryland | 170 | 2.05% | $258,000 | 40.81 |
| Missouri | 169 | 2.04% | $276,000 | 88.11 |
| Tennessee | 162 | 1.95% | $277,000 | 66.23 |
| Virginia | 158 | 1.9% | $280,000 | 49.21 |
| Washington | 155 | 1.87% | $282,000 | 47.5 |
| Kentucky | 151 | 1.82% | $300,000 | 83.38 |
| South Carolina | 142 | 1.71% | $310,000 | 90.97 |
| Oklahoma | 120 | 1.45% | $290,000 | 140.85 |
| Minnesota | 117 | 1.41% | $315,000 | 56.06 |
| Delaware | 107 | 1.29% | $304,000 | 233.62 |
| New Mexico | 106 | 1.28% | $309,000 | 137.13 |
| Arkansas | 105 | 1.26% | $274,000 | 125.6 |
| Maine | 105 | 1.26% | $307,000 | 121.11 |
| New Jersey | 105 | 1.26% | $257,000 | 28.98 |
| Kansas | 89 | 1.07% | $271,000 | 88.47 |
| Oregon | 86 | 1.04% | $305,000 | 40.38 |
| Nevada | 83 | 1% | $300,000 | 93.15 |
| Rhode Island | 75 | 0.9% | $255,000 | 95.42 |
| Nebraska | 74 | 0.89% | $265,000 | 114.55 |
| New Hampshire | 53 | 0.64% | $276,000 | 70.29 |
| Utah | 50 | 0.6% | $333,000 | 47.26 |
| Colorado | 48 | 0.58% | $251,000 | 18.8 |
| District of Columbia | 48 | 0.58% | $239,000 | 60.3 |
| Mississippi | 45 | 0.54% | $323,000 | 48.18 |
| Vermont | 33 | 0.4% | $302,000 | 88.71 |
| South Dakota | 32 | 0.39% | $425,000 | 122.61 |
| North Dakota | 28 | 0.34% | $337,000 | 99.64 |
| Montana | 24 | 0.29% | $360,000 | 56.87 |
| Hawaii | 20 | 0.24% | $295,000 | 36.3 |
| Wyoming | 12 | 0.14% | $475,000 | 74.07 |
| Idaho | 9 | 0.11% | $275,000 | 18 |
| Alaska | 4 | 0.05% | $400,000 | 12.08 |
| MP | 3 | 0.04% | $350,000 | — |
| GU | 2 | 0.02% | $466,000 | — |
Metro, city or small town
Share of filings by place size
| Place | Filings | Share | Median offered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rural or small town | 4,784 | 57.62% | $299,000 |
| Small city | 2,453 | 29.55% | $275,000 |
| Mid-sized city | 855 | 10.3% | $260,000 |
| Unrecorded location | 210 | 2.53% | $275,000 |
What this counts, and what it misses
Place size is a proxy. No population figure is available here, so cities are sized by how many providers the registry lists in them — 5,000 or more is a large metro, 750 a mid-sized city, 150 a small city, below that rural. A city with five thousand providers is a metro whatever its census count; one with forty is not. City names are normalised on both sides, because the two sources spell them differently more often than you would expect, and the share that could not be matched is shown rather than hidden.
These are filings, not people. Each row is an employer's Labor Condition Application — a step in sponsoring a role, not an approved visa and not a person. One physician generates several over a career: the initial petition, renewals, amendments, a change of employer. There is no identifier to deduplicate on, so filings overstate physicians by an unknown multiple. Every figure here is counted in filings and should be read that way.
The rural share is an undercount, and knowing why matters. Most international physicians working in underserved and rural America arrive on a J-1 waiver under the Conrad 30 programme, which requires three years of service in a shortage area. Those physicians do not appear in this dataset at all. So the small-town figure here describes H-1B sponsorship specifically, not international physicians in rural practice — which is a larger group, concentrated in exactly the places this chart shows least of.
Residents and fellows are excluded, by job title and by a $120,000 salary floor. Training posts are sponsored in large numbers at a fraction of a practising salary and would drag every median down — emergency medicine landed at $83,000 before that filter.
The pay comparison is between different things. The filing states a salary offered for an employed role. The national median is a government wage survey that excludes practice owners. Both describe employed pay, which makes them roughly comparable, but neither includes the practice income of an owner. Where the national figure is marked "cap", the survey stopped publishing above its ceiling and the real difference is larger than shown.
From Department of Labor disclosure files, 4556–4593. Public data, published quarterly.