H-1B Salary Threshold 2026 Bill: What the $140,000 Proposal Does

A bill now in both chambers of Congress would lift the H-1B salary exemption from $60,000 — frozen since 1998 — to roughly $140,000, tied to a live wage index. It is not a $140,000 minimum wage, and most tech workers would never feel it. Here is the mechanism the headlines skip.

In brief

• The H-1B salary threshold 2026 bill would tie the H-1B exemption to 2x the SSA wage index, about $140,000. What changes, who it hits, and when it could move.
• What does the h-1b salary threshold 2026 bill actually change?: The bill is the Protecting American Workers Through H-1B Modernization Act.
• Why is $60,000 the line, and how did it freeze for 28 years?: To understand the bill, you need the 1998 origin story.
• What is the dynamic formula, and where does $140,000 come from?: Instead of picking a new fixed number that would freeze again, the bill replaces $60,000 with a moving standard: twice the National Average Wage Index, whatever that i…
• Who counts as an H-1B-dependent employer — and is yours one?: Here is the part most coverage skips, and it is the part that determines whether the bill touches you at all.

The h-1b salary threshold 2026 bill does not do what the loudest headlines imply. It would not require every H-1B worker in America to earn $140,000, and it would not change what most tech employers pay the visa workers they sponsor. What it would change is a little-known escape hatch: a rule that lets the heaviest users of the H-1B program skip the steps Congress designed to ensure American workers get a first look at a job. That escape hatch has a salary line — $60,000 a year — set in 1998 and untouched ever since. The bill would finally move it, and then keep it moving automatically.

What does the h-1b salary threshold 2026 bill actually change?

The bill is the Protecting American Workers Through H-1B Modernization Act. Senator Jon Husted, Republican of Ohio, introduced the Senate version in early October 2026. On October 13, Representative Glenn Grothman, Republican of Wisconsin, introduced the House companion, H.R. 10799, which was referred to the House Judiciary Committee with no cosponsors yet. A bill in each chamber gives the proposal a bicameral vehicle — a procedural step, not a change to any rule.

For now, it is only a proposal. It must pass both chambers and be signed before anything changes, and history is not encouraging: a similar proposal cleared the House Judiciary Committee in 2017 and then died, according to the immigration-policy publication US Immigration, Explained Daily. The existing $60,000 salary exemption and the master’s-degree exemption remain the law today.

The bill does one narrow thing. It targets the salary exemption from the extra obligations that apply to H-1B-dependent employers. Nothing else in the H-1B program — not the lottery, not the prevailing-wage rules, not the master’s-degree exemption — is touched.

Why is $60,000 the line, and how did it freeze for 28 years?

To understand the bill, you need the 1998 origin story. Under the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of that year, Congress created a category of “H-1B-dependent employers” — companies whose workforces rely heavily on the visa — and attached extra duties to them: they must attest that they tried in good faith to recruit American workers and that they will not displace American workers around the time of the hire.

But Congress also built in an escape hatch. A dependent employer is exempt from those attestations for a given hire if it pays the H-1B worker at least $60,000 a year, or if the worker holds a master’s degree or higher. The $60,000 figure was not plucked from the air: according to Senator Husted’s office, it was intended to equal twice the Social Security Administration’s National Average Wage Index at the time.

Then Congress never touched it again. For roughly 28 years the figure sat at $60,000 while wages compounded. What was once double the national average wage is now below the national average itself. That is the “loophole” the bill’s sponsors describe — not a drafting error, but a number left to rot. “For decades, companies have been able to sidestep hiring American workers because of a salary threshold that hasn’t budged since 1998,” Husted said when introducing the bill. “That’s not modernization, that’s a loophole.”

What is the dynamic formula, and where does $140,000 come from?

Instead of picking a new fixed number that would freeze again, the bill replaces $60,000 with a moving standard: twice the National Average Wage Index, whatever that index is when the calculation is made. The threshold would rise automatically as American wages rise — no new act of Congress required.

The “$140,000” figure is what that formula produces today. The sponsors’ offices put the National Average Wage Index at nearly $70,000; twice that is nearly $140,000. The math checks out against the official series: the Social Security Administration’s published index for 2024 is $69,846.57, and twice that is $139,693.14 — effectively $140,000.

And the index is still moving. In its October 2026 announcement, the SSA put the 2025 index at $72,800.33 — twice which would be $145,600.65. That is the point of the formula: $140,000 is today’s snapshot, not the law’s ceiling. If the bill passed, the number would keep climbing with wages, and any employer planning around it would need to watch the SSA’s annual announcement, not a statute.

Who counts as an H-1B-dependent employer — and is yours one?

Here is the part most coverage skips, and it is the part that determines whether the bill touches you at all. An H-1B-dependent employer is defined by the Labor Department in three tiers: a company with 25 or fewer full-time-equivalent employees and at least 8 H-1B workers; one with 26 to 50 employees and at least 13 H-1B workers; or one with 51 or more employees where H-1B workers make up at least 15 percent of the US workforce (DOL Fact Sheet #62C).

Think about what that means in practice. A tech company with 10,000 US employees would need 1,500 H-1B workers on staff to trip the 15 percent line. The sponsors describe the affected group as mostly IT outsourcing and staffing firms — the body shops whose business model is built on placing visa workers at client sites. Large product companies, universities, and hospitals with a handful of sponsored researchers are generally not dependent employers, and the bill would not change their obligations at all.

If you are an H-1B worker at a dependent employer, the bill still would not change your salary. It would change your employer’s paperwork: below the new threshold, the company would have to attest that it recruited Americans in good faith and that it did not displace — and will not displace — American workers in an essentially equivalent job in the 90 days before or after your hire. Above the threshold, or with a master’s degree, the exemption still applies and the attestations are still waived.

So is this a $140,000 minimum wage for H-1B workers?

No — and this is the single most common misreading of the story. The bill does not set any minimum salary for H-1B workers. The wage floor for the program remains what it has always been: the prevailing wage for the occupation and area, certified on the Labor Condition Application. A dependent employer hiring below the new threshold would simply have to do the recruitment and non-displacement attestations; it could still hire at the prevailing wage.

The master’s-degree exemption is not targeted by the bill as described in the sponsors’ releases, either. A dependent employer hiring an H-1B worker with a master’s or higher skips the extra attestations regardless of salary, before and after this bill. For a large share of the program’s workers — particularly in tech roles — that exemption means the bill’s practical bite is smaller than the headline number suggests.

Why now? The $100,000 fee and the fraud allegations

The bill did not arrive in a vacuum. On September 18, 2026, President Trump signed a proclamation extending the $100,000 H-1B fee — originally imposed by Proclamation 10973 in September 2025 on new petitions for workers outside the United States — for another 12 months, through September 21, 2027. On the same day he signed an executive order directing agencies to weigh employers’ recent layoffs when reviewing H-1B petitions and to coordinate fraud enforcement.

There is an important wrinkle the fee coverage often buries: the $100,000 fee is currently not being collected. A federal court in Massachusetts vacated the implementing policy on June 8, 2026, and the First Circuit refused to pause that ruling on July 24, 2026, while the government’s appeal proceeds. The extension keeps the legal framework alive through September 2027 if the administration wins on appeal — but no employer is paying the fee today.

The political backdrop is the administration’s fraud crackdown. Administration officials have publicly alleged roughly $20 billion in visa-program fraud: at an October 8 briefing, Vice President JD Vance cited approximately $20 billion in fraud uncovered within the Labor Department, while Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling cited $22 billion uncovered through an anti-fraud task force and more than 200 convictions over five months. The administration has not published a detailed breakdown of how those figures were calculated, and the allegations remain under investigation — but the numbers explain why H-1B legislation is moving now, and why the bill’s sponsors frame it as closing a loophole rather than restricting the program.

When could this actually become law?

Not soon. The House is out until after the November 3 midterm elections, and the bill is unlikely to move before then. Even after the recess, it would need committee action in the House Judiciary Committee, a floor vote, Senate passage, and a presidential signature — a gauntlet that killed its 2017 predecessor.

That timeline matters for how to read this story. For employers, the bill is a signal of where the political wind is blowing — toward tighter wage-based screens on the heaviest visa users — not a compliance deadline. Nothing about your next H-1B filing changes because this bill exists.

What this means for you

• H-1B workers at non-dependent employers — which is most of the tech industry: nothing in this bill would change your visa, your salary, or your employer’s obligations. Check whether your employer is H-1B-dependent before worrying.
• H-1B workers at dependent employers (often IT staffing and outsourcing firms): your employer could face new recruitment and non-displacement attestations for hires below roughly $140,000 — but the master’s-degree exemption still waives those duties, and your pay itself is not regulated by this bill.
• US tech employers that are H-1B-dependent: model your hiring against a moving 2x-wage-index line, not a fixed $140,000. The threshold will keep rising with the SSA’s annual index.
• Everyone watching the calendar: the bill cannot move before the House returns after the November 3 midterms, and its 2017 predecessor died in the same committee it now sits in. Treat it as direction, not destiny.
• On the $100,000 fee: the September 18 extension runs the policy through September 21, 2027, but courts have blocked collection — no employer is paying it while the Massachusetts ruling stands.

More on this

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Sources

• US Immigration Today — House bill would raise the H-1B threshold to about $140,000
• VisaVerge — Grothman bill updates the H-1B exemption to the wage index

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