Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

I'm glad our government has introduced the H1B program to help out employers like you who are dealing with a shortage of tech workers (who will work for 2/3 market and will do anything you say because if they get fired they'll be deported).

Fwiw they're probably just making a point to protest the phenomenon.

H1b should be a bid salery to play not first to apply. That is we will allow x of them, when you sponser someone you commit to paying them some salary for the full term - no layoffs (you get fire for cause but that is a legal thing they can take you to court for , and the courts can force you to give back pay if it wasn't a good cause) , you should know your budget can afford them. , someone who really is the best , offer them a million dollars to be sure they get in , just a warm body , if they don't get in who cares.

There are ways to abuse the above, but note they can always quit.

In 2023 there were 755,020 H1-B admittances. Why was it much easier to get a job in 2021? Because there were only 148,603 [1]. Notice that even though Republicans talked about immigration, neither party is talking about reducing H1-B filled roles. The kicker is if you’ve had a gap doing your own thing or because you were laid off and you apply for a job at a discount salary, you’re still not competitive against an H1-B worker because employers know you’d be able to trade up once you’ve been working for a few months.

[1] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa...

This means small companies may not get good talent that value things besides salary (wfh, perks, fun project) and will have to compete with corporations for people who only cares about money. This may (or may not) impact startups

These numbers probably don't mean what you think they mean. Certainly, the number of H-1B holders in 2021 and 2023 is about the same.

An "admittance" is someone with a H-1B visa appearing a port of entry like an airport to enter the US. If a single H-1B holder goes on (say) 3 international trips in 1 year, that will count as 3 "admittances" in that year.

The reason why the number is so low in 2021 is that the US government had a COVID non-immigrant travel ban. People with H-1B visas couldn't re-enter the US from many countries e.g. most countries in Europe. Many people in H-1B status (like myself) simply didn't take international trips that year.

By law, the number of H1B visas issued per year is capped at 80k, and that's how many have been issued every year for the last twenty years.

"Admittance rates" measure how many H1B people travel internationally and then return to the USA. Unsurprisingly, in 2023, more people traveled internationally than in 2021, when almost all countries closed their borders.

What makes you so sure the job wouldn't just exist somewhere cheaper like Europe if they couldn't hire for 2/3 in the US?

Same as ever though, this is tangential to H1B.

Because it’s hard to fire someone in the EU. Eastern Europe is cheaper and so is India.

But if I bothered to look up what the words mean about complex administrative questions, I forfeit my right to be outraged!

Add "automatic green card at the end of three years if sponsored again by the same employer".

Otherwise, the job would just be extremely cushy. Work the absolute bare minimum not to give cause for dismissal, and you're untouchable for the duration.

Using agencies largely solves the "hard to fire someone" problem.

Great point. The H-1B receipts total[1] is probably what most are looking for

2020: 427,200 2021: 398,300 2022: 474,300 2023: 386,600

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/f...

Source that prevailing wage is 2/3 of the market?

Stop it, no one "values things besides salary", and you know it.

I get your point, but if that were completely true, no one would work in the videogame or embedded software sectors. They pay dramatically less, especially early in career.

I value a good manager, a fun team, an actual PTO policy I can use, and cool projects to work with at about $40,000 a year. Salary is valuable but it is not the only valuable thing.

Is there any evidence H1B workers in tech have lowered wages?

I have only seen anecdotes while the law explicitly states H1Bs should be paid the prevailing wage or above.

It's what I would naturally expect to happen in the absence of consistent heroic efforts by the authorities to prevent it.

That's only 99% true, but the 1% of exceptions will get an egregiously disproportionate amount of attention and concern.

I thought that number was conservative. I was hiring at 1/2 and 1/3.

I worked at a globally remote company. Most of the European devs worked for a one man consulting company, that my employer then "contracted" out to. I'm not sure if that nullifies all the protections, but I'm sure it did a lot.

...If your goal was to force companies to hire native citizens wherever possible, and only H1B workers when absolutely necessary, that might be the point.

So source: “trust me bro”?

If you people only valued salary you'd all be in sales :)

If that is happening widely, surely there will be some data to support that right?

Authorities do enforce H1B provisions proactively.

https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau...

https://cis.org/North/Apple-Hit-25-Million-Penalty-Favoring-...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/11/06/h-1b-visa-fraud-leads...

> absence of consistent heroic efforts

Will that apply to every law in society or just to H1B laws?

Despite absence of consistent heroic efforts, we don't see widespread criminal activities.

I hired a developer who just wanted a cushy job and I offered him a cushy job.

I offered 4 day work week, no on-call, no overtime, but paid less than their previous employer (because I couldn't afford it).

I am sure lots of people value things besides salary.

Yes! Great find.

(Although, even these statistics are not as simple as they seem! E.g., when an H-1B status holder changes employer this counts as a new receipt even though the number of H-1B workers hasn't changed. In periods of time when there is lots of churn in the labor market, like in 2022, you would see higher receipt numbers just from the churn. It's complicated!)

That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone?

I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them.

You can even fire people for getting sick a lot.

And that's assuming you directly hire them as employees in the first place. Many people work via agencies or as contractors, and they have practically zero protections.

Wealthier European countries seem to be moving towards clamping down on this kind of consulting. See IR35 in the UK as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35

This is still possible in many European countries, especially less wealthy ones.

This is the lump of labor fallacy. People are both consumers and laborers; by bringing someone new into a labor market you marginally decrease demand for their skill set but you also marginally increase demand for all other labor. If H1-B visa holders all worked in the same industry, it could conceivably lower wages in that industry but they don't. They work in everything from healthcare, to IT, to education.

Look up that "prevailing wage". It's a deep discount compared to the real world.

Minimum for a Software Developer in SF: $113,444 https://h1bgrader.com/

Changing the work hours doesn't technically affect "salary" but it's a change in wages. I think your example mostly reinforces the point, but we should be using the word "wages" to be clearer.

This is an incredibly obnoxious response. This isn't a court. People can site their professional experience in an informal conversation.

You know what’s actually obnoxious? spreading nonsense for internet points. This is all public data btw so you can easily go on DOL website and pull those apps with real salaries.

If we are trading anecdotes here I personally dont know any h1bs who are making less than 300k total comp. Hows that for obnoxious?

Are you serious? I know quite clearly that people do value things besides salary!

You're halfway there. H1Bs should also require payment to the government of $250k/year. Style it as a fee or a tax or whatever.

I mean, that's not entirely true.

Mostly true, yes. A monthly pizza and beer party won't make up for lack of salary, but extra PTO that I can use can.

Like...if I had the choice of a job that offered $200K/year but only 2 weeks PTO, and another offered only $185K but 5 weeks PTO, I'd take the latter.

Honestly I'd love a company that gave 4 weeks PTO with the option to take up to another 4 weeks unpaid.

Right, and while the fraudulent H1-B hires (taking jobs where there are qualified unemployed Americans who would like them) are taking jobs from Americans, the illegal immigrants, about to be deported, are not (even if we taxpayers are paying $500/night to put them up in NYC hotels etc).

I don't think Trump give a crap about helping American workers, anymore than his buddy Elon does - the anti-immigrant thing was just that.

Fidessa is pretty famous on Wall Street for paying lower salaries but being much more fun to work for. They have tons of at-work and after-work events (with and without alcohol). There are lots of people who stay at Fidessa for much less money than they could make at another firm.

Wow, I am genuinely shocked by this post. I had no idea. Honestly, I assumed that most central European countries have reasonably strong labour laws that make it difficult to fire employees. Let us assume that your post is (mostly) true. How does Austria have such a large, robust, stable middle class without strong labour protections, or a wide/deep social safety net? Or does Austria have the equivalent of "Flexcurity" from Denmark (easy to fire, but wide/deep social safety net for a moderate period of time)?

>That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone?

Maybe the statement isn't true for EU as a whole, but some member countries have far higher bar than what you describe. For instance in Spain the company must provide justification to the government before firing someone.

https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-spain

Just speaking from my experience -- if the company is a big corp, usually the wages follow average market rates (I was paid market average wage in a top advertising corp in the world and I got my green card there in 6-7 years). Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out average market rates for each job category and the H1B sponsor has to match or pay above that to get the H1B application approved. I was also checking out my market rates (i.e., applying for other companies that allows H1B transfer) constantly during my H1B time because I can move to another job if my current company was paying me lower than average wages.

On the other hand, for some shady companies that are set up as contract shops, then I'd not be surprised if the wages are lower than average market rate, but I have never worked at one, so I might be misleading by even mentioning this here.

I'd argue that most workers value several things over salary. Very few people are trying to maximize their income at the expense of everything else. They tend to limit their job searches to places near their families. They apply to jobs they'd enjoy doing or at least wouldn't mind vs jobs they'd hate but which pay better. They don't apply to jobs that pay well but are also highly dangerous. etc.

Money > everything just isn't how most people see the world.

What do you think that is wrong?

H1B devs at FAANG companies are paid far more.

Maybe software-adjacent people applying to startups, but in general, this obviously can't be true. Relatively low-paying but high-status jobs, like FBI agent, military officer, elected official, judge wouldn't exist, nor low-paying passion work like social worker, wildlife conservation, most non-profits, low-paying jobs that are simply fun like most musicians, pro athletes in unpopular sports. Plenty of capable, talented people who could be making more money choose not to.

That's a low bar for "hard".

Companies should vet their emplopees better than that before hiring. Though there is potential to fire for cause if someone who should be able to do the work in 40 hour weeks isn't getting it done.

note that I added a 40 hour work week qualifier above.

I hope you aren't suggesting it is hypocritical to not oppose legal immigration when opposing illegal immigration.

Thank you all for clarifying. So 80k/year is the key number.

The same FAANG companies found guilty of depressing wages through collusion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Your question is why is it wrong to depress wages? Yeah, really tough question.

Now consider OPT visa workers which are being paid even less, plus companies get an extra 8-10% discount because they don't have to pay Social Security and Medicare. There is no shortage of skilled workers here. Only corporate greed.

Labour protections doesn't mean you are protected from being fired.

You have to pay people the minimum salary depending on their trade, you have to give them 5 weeks of vacation, pay overtime, pay for health insurance and so on.

Employers can't exploit their employees, but employees still have to do their job.

But there is also a big area of the economy where employers ignore the law and treat employees like shit. For example, service workers are not generally treated well in Austria, and many are afraid of losing their job so they don't complain to the authorities.

Salary is the most valuable thing, however. Because I would happily take a salary of 1 billion dollars with an awful manager and a no-fun team. And, conversely, I would never take a job with the best people on planet earth for a salary of one dollar.

I don't know about the situation in Spain, but what a lot of people in Austria mix up is that there are different types of terminating contracts.

In Austria, the employer can terminate a contract immediately if the employee behaves in a manner that would harm the employer.

If the employee does nothing wrong, the contract can still be terminated, but you have to give notice 6 weeks ahead (or longer if the employee has worked at your company for a long time).

People get these things confused and think employees generally can't be fired without a reason, but that's not true. They just can't be fired on the spot without a reason.

I mean, IR35 happened because you could avoid a lot of tax as a contractor. In Ireland however, being a contractor is fine, but you end up basically paying the same tax as an employed person, so the tax authorities don't mind.

Well, of course, you can make up hypotheticals. I used to say that you couldn't pay me enough to work in NYC. But of course I didn't literally mean that I wouldn't take FU money for a couple years to work there (not doing anything criminal etc.). But that wasn't going to realistically happen.

one possible option to prevent ghost job posting for visa is to force employers to share the hiring month, salary, qualification and annonymized resume of the H1B/GC employer with all those they interviewed or applied. This will give closure to those applicants that didn't get the job.

If you were offered a job with an awful manager and a no-fun team for $250,000, and a job with the best people on the planet for $249,999, which one would you choose?

How do we have ghost jobs and simultanously not have enough tech workers that we need to import them?

I am seeing lots of qualified commentors (according to them) say they won't even get a call back...

Right, naturally the extent matters, but it's still the most important statistic when doing cost analysis.

Also, other statistics are just wage in disguise. Work-life balance refers to working less, which means a higher wage. PTO is also just working less, which is a higher wage. WFH means less driving + lower cost of living, which is an effective higher wage.

66% of H1-B approvals are in computer related positions. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/OLA_...

You seem to be genuinely curious, which is commendable.

>Will that apply to every law in society or just to H1B laws?

The H1B laws are harder to enforce than most laws -- or so it would seem to me -- because the question of whether there are Americans that are able to do a particular job at a particular workplace depends on many fiddly details that only the managers of the particular workplace (the prospective defendant in any enforcement action) would know.

When lawyers working on Capitol Hill are serious about stamping out a behavior, they write laws that are easy to enforce (unambiguous, not relying much on human judgment). Something as vague as, "as long as there are no Americans qualified to do the job," suggests that whoever wrote that just wants to reassure critics of the H1B program without caring much whether H1B workers actually displace American workers.

>Any offspring also doesn't qualify for citizenship.

Literally anti-constitutional.

If you can't live off of $40,000 a year, you are not taking that job. I'm not saying there aren't people already independently wealthy and "working" for fun but those are an infinitesimal exception.

Of course people value things besides salary, but if there was no salary or the salary would not be enough to live off, none of those things matter in any way. So first and foremost (unless you're a billionaire's son) is salary, for everyone.

I think they mean that they will take a job with those benefits for 40k less than a job without. I assume generally they are looking at positions that pay substantially more than that.

And for how long they stay and how many get green cards.

"My moral compass is whatever the law says" also it is a amendment to it.

Corporations know the H1B scam and they only look to hire those who they can get under that indentured-servitude type contract.

Define “real world” and how it differs from actual data used to compute the prevailing wage.

> The H1B laws are harder to enforce than most laws -- or so it would seem to me

Most laws are like this. Do you know criminality laws require intent and yet we do fine without mind reading devices.

Most H1Bs are in software and wages in software have been rising along with number of people in software engineering over the long term.

You effectively offered them a higher dollar/hour rate. And depending on how much they value their free time, that's more $$ in their figurative bank.

I thought the same, I wasn't going to feed the troll so remained silent.

I don't think I even paid them more per hour. The problem was that all the other companies only want to hire full time programmers, so I was able to hire them by offering a job with fewer hours.

Also, they complained that their previous job was super stressful because the sales people kept making promises to customers that were really hard to keep ("of course we'll implement this in two weeks") and so they were constantly scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.

Perhaps so, but in our highly-compensated industry, that is a very low bar! Your point may be technically correct, after you have sliced it so finely, but it is no longer very interesting.

Not sure if it meant to be joke but I do value things besides salary. I literally accepted offer with 40% drop recently. Salary is important and it doesn’t make sense to work for free. But after some threshold increase is salary doesn’t change life drastically. But not spending 40 hours doing boring stuff changes life a lot.