Scientific Research and Development Services H-1B Wage Premium
The DOL prevailing wage is the legal minimum an employer must pay for a given role, level, and location, not a target. Employers classified under Scientific Research and Development Services (NAICS 5417) pay a median of 11.4% above that floor, but 28.2% of filings are at or within 1% of the legal minimum.
What "Wage Premium" Means
Every H-1B Labor Condition Application states a DOL-determined prevailing wage, the minimum legally required for that occupation, experience level, and worksite. Wage premium is how much an employer's actual offered wage exceeds that floor. A 0% premium means the filing states exactly the legal minimum; it is not evidence of a problem, but it means the offered wage carries no information beyond what the law already requires.
Premium varies enormously by employer within the same industry, some pay the floor on every filing, others consistently pay well above it. The table below is not a ranking of employer quality; it measures one thing only: how each employer's offered wage compares to the legal minimum for Scientific Research and Development Services filings.
Employers Paying Furthest Above the Floor
| Employer | Certified Filings | Avg. Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Food and Drug Administration | 209 | +94.2% |
| OpenAI OpCo, LLC | 350 | +93.6% |
| Battelle Memorial Institute | 648 | +69.7% |
| National Institutes of Health, HHS | 1,046 | +69.2% |
| Ut-battelle, LLC (oak Ridge National Laboratory) | 923 | +62.6% |
| The Broad Institute, Inc. | 305 | +55.9% |
| Southwest Research Institute | 60 | +53.7% |
| American Institutes for Research | 67 | +53.1% |
Employers with at least 30 certified filings in this industry, ranked by average premium over prevailing wage.
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Computed from US Department of Labor LCA disclosure files for employers classified under NAICS 5417, Scientific Research and Development Services, comparing each filing's offered annual wage to its own DOL prevailing wage figure (annualized from an hourly rate where filed hourly), filtered to certified petitions with annual wages between $30K and $1M and a positive prevailing wage on file. Per-employer premium is shown only where an employer has at least 30 qualifying filings in this industry, to keep the percentage from being driven by a handful of cases.