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August 3, 2026 Effects of the New $100,000 Fee and Wage-Weighted Lottery on the H-1B Visa

Effects of the New $100,000 Fee and Wage-Weighted Lottery on the H-1B Visa We project that the new $100,000 H-1B fee and wage-weighted lottery would raise mean selected pay by $7,551 to $18,799 (6.7 to 16.7 percent) over the prior random lottery at current prevailing wages, with most of the gain from the weighting, not the fee.PWBM projects the $100,000 H-1B fee and wage-weighted lottery would raise mean selected pay by $7,551 to $18,799 over the random lottery, mostly from the weighting.2026-08-03T00:00:00.000Z Effects of the New $100,000 Fee and Wage-Weighted Lottery on the H-1B Visa We project that the new $100,000 H-1B fee and wage-weighted lottery would raise mean selected pay by $7,551 to $18,799 (6.7 to 16.7 percent) over the prior random lottery at current prevailing wages, with most of the gain from the weighting, not the fee.

Key Points

A September 2025 Presidential Proclamation requires a $100,000 fee for H-1B petitions filed for workers abroad, an estimated 60 percent of registrations. H-1B workers subject to the fee are less likely to hold a master’s degree or higher (11.5 versus 63.8 percent of fee-exempt workers), more likely to be Indian nationals (82.2 versus 51.2 percent), and about five years older on average (34.2 versus 29.4).

We estimate that employers would be willing to pay the $100,000 for only 30 to 56 percent of fee-subject registrations, depending on how much of the payment they recover through lower payroll. The fee would screen out the rest before they reach the new wage-level-weighted lottery, cutting the fee-subject share of the lottery pool from about 60 percent to roughly 31 to 46 percent.

Together, the $100,000 fee and the wage-level-weighted lottery would raise the average pay of selected registrants above the pre-2026 random lottery (the selection design used through the March 2025 lottery, before the new wage weighting) by $7,551 to $18,799, or 6.7 to 16.7 percent, under current prevailing wages; under the higher 2026 NPRM prevailing wages the gain would be larger still, $16,542 to $28,686 (14.7 to 25.5 percent). Most of the increase comes from the wage weighting, not the fee, which on its own changes pay by −$3,606 to +$7,642, depending on how much of the payment employers recover through lower payroll.

Relative to the pre-2026 random lottery, the wage-level-weighting and the $100,000 fee would reduce India’s selection share from 66.8 percent to between 55.7 and 63.5 percent, increase the doctorate share from 5.7 percent to as much as 9.5 percent, lower the share of selected workers with no prior U.S. visa from 44.5 percent to between 26.1 and 33.9 percent, and raise the former F-1-student share from 43.3 percent to between 48.5 and 50.8 percent.

Background

Starting with the FY 2027 visa lottery, the 85,000 cap-subject H-1B visas are allocated through a wage-level-weighted lottery, assigning 1 to 4 lottery entries based on each registration’s prevailing wage level. In previous work we have analyzed that design, as well as the impact of raising prevailing wages as proposed in the Department of Labor’s 2026 notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM).

A second new policy operates alongside the new lottery design: a September 19, 2025 Presidential Proclamation requires a $100,000 fee for certain H-1B petitions filed on or after September 21, 2025.1 The payment applies to petitions for workers who are outside the United States, including petitions that request consular processing. It does not apply to petitions that extend the status of, or change the status of, a worker already in the United States in valid status, and it does not apply to anyone holding a currently valid H-1B visa. We label the petitions to which the payment applies “fee-subject” and the remainder “fee-exempt.”

We simulate the combined effects of the fee and the wage-level-weighted lottery using a synthetic FY 2024 registration pool built from data obtained by Bloomberg.2 An employer subject to the fee registers a worker only when the hire is worth the $100,000 to the firm, so anticipation of the payment screens out some fee-subject registrations before the lottery. How much of the payment employers can recover through lower payroll is uncertain, so we report our results across two illustrative scenarios rather than a single estimate. Because we build on the FY 2024 pool, our estimates describe how the two policies reshape the composition of selections rather than forecasting future application volumes. We present the details of this analysis in the appendix.

Who is subject to the $100,000 fee

The fee is not a uniform charge on H-1B hiring. It applies to the 60 percent of registrations that we estimate are filed for workers abroad.3 The...