Top Occupations in LCA Filings
Occupations, classified under the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, are the backbone of LCA wage data. The prevailing wage that an employer must meet is set by occupation and area, so grouping filings by SOC code produces the most meaningful salary comparisons in the entire dataset. This index lists the forty occupations with the most certified filings in FY2024âFY2025, each linking to a dedicated page with its median and mean offered wage, its middle-half range, its top employers and its top worksites.
Computer and mathematical occupations dominate LCA filings nationally, and readers will see that concentration reflected at the top of this table. That dominance is itself an important finding about the programme's practical use: although the LCA covers the H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 visa classes across all professional occupations, in practice a large share of filings cluster in a relatively small set of technology, engineering, healthcare, finance and education roles. Salary medians must be read with that clustering in mind, because a national all-occupation median blends those very different labour markets into a single number.
One code deserves a warning label wherever it appears: SOC 15-1252, Software Developers, functions as a reclassification catch-all. Following the SOC revision, roles once split among several computer codes were consolidated there, and employers map internal titles onto it inconsistently. Its page on this site carries a dedicated caveat section, and researchers studying developer pay should compare it with neighbouring computer codes rather than treating any one code as a complete census of a job title.
Every occupation page on this site is computed the same way: certified cases only, headline medians from annual-wage filings only, placeholder wages removed under a published outlier rule, and both median and mean reported so that the effect of very large offers is visible rather than hidden. Occupations below the forty listed here still appear throughout the site inside employer, state and city tables, where their filing counts are shown even when they do not have a standalone page.
How These Figures Were Computed
Every figure on this page was computed by our script directly from the U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA disclosure files for FY2024 Q4 and FY2025 Q1âQ4, retrieved in October 2026. We kept only cases whose CASE_STATUS is exactly “Certified” â denied, withdrawn and certified-withdrawn cases are excluded. Headline medians use filings whose wage unit is a year, because annual salaries compare cleanly; hourly, weekly and monthly filings are counted in case totals but are not converted into the headline median, and our methodology page explains that choice in full. Wages below $15,080 a year (the annualized federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour) or above $1,000,000 a year are excluded from medians as likely data-entry placeholders, and the number excluded is reported in the manifest that accompanies this site. Medians are shown alongside means because a handful of very large offers can drag a mean far above what a typical filing actually offered.