Universities and nonprofit research institutes sit outside the H-1B cap by statute. No March lottery, no 30% odds — you can file in any month. We map that hidden market.
Outside the lottery, by statute
Cap-exempt employers file under INA §214(g)(5). No quota, no lottery, no seasonal window — a petition can go in the month you're hired.
Only the ones who actually sponsor
Every opening is cross-referenced against real Department of Labor H-1B filing records, so you see who has a track record — not just who's hiring.
Every position, one link away
706 verified openings across thirteen fields. Each field has a full report and a positions tracker, free to download.
What we counted, and the two things that are easy to get wrong
The report has two independent halves, and keeping them apart is the whole design. The position sweep says who is hiring right now. The filing data says who has actually sponsored. Neither substitutes for the other.
Trap one — the column count moves between quarters
The FY2025 Q1 file carried 97 columns and Q2–Q4 carried 98. Reading a wage field by position shifts it by one for three quarters of the year and produces medians that look plausible and are wrong. Every field here is extracted by column name.
Trap two — rows are worksites, not petitions
A single petition covering four locations appears four times. Raw row counts overstate the market roughly fourfold. Everything above is deduplicated on case number before anything is counted.
This edition is a verification pass, not a census. Read it as a floor, not the market.
Our July edition mapped 3,908 positions through a full sweep. This month we published only what we could verify directly: every posting listed here was fetched and read on 26 August, confirmed still open, and carries a working application link. That standard yields 706 postings at 227 institutions in 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Where the jobs are
706 verified openings across thirteen fields. Each field has a full report and a positions tracker, free to download.
Browse every position
Every position from all thirteen spreadsheets, in one place. Pick a field, filter by role, tier or state, search by institution or keyword, then apply directly. Nothing here routes through us.
| Institution | Position | Role | Location | Deadline | Apply |
|---|
See every position — free
Showing the first three positions.
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The thirteen editions
Each field has its own nineteen-page report and a sheet listing every open position we verified, with a direct application link on each row. Both are published with this edition, so what you open is always the edition you are reading.
Biological Sciences
Computer Science & AI
Engineering
Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Physics & Astronomy
Mathematics & Statistics
Materials Science & Nanotech
Earth, Environmental & Climate
Public Health & Epidemiology
Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical
Agriculture, Plant & Food
Neuroscience & Psychology
Economics, Finance & Business
Every one of the thirteen reports and thirteen position sheets is published with this edition and linked from the cards above, so what you open is always the edition you are reading, never last month's copy of it.
Postdoc-Level Jobs Hiding in Plain Sight
Across the twelve highest-volume institutions — Mayo, Massachusetts General, the NIH and Dana-Farber among them — 1,188 postdoctoral petitions were filed under other titles. Exactly one was labelled “postdoc.” Search the title and you find none of them. Add Research Fellow, Research Associate, Research Scholar, Staff Scientist, Scientist I/II and Investigator to every alert.
We told you national laboratories were an under-considered route. That needs a caveat we did not give.
In July we wrote that DOE national laboratories pay roughly double the academic median and are equally cap-exempt, and that almost nobody considers them as an immigration route. The pay and the cap exemption were right. The advice was incomplete.
Of the 117 national-laboratory postings we verified this month, a large share carry a condition that has nothing to do with the H-1B cap: Q-level security clearance requiring US citizenship, NDAA Section 3112 restrictions on nationals of specific countries, or export-control limits. The employer is cap-exempt. The specific role may still be closed to you.
- The corrected advice
- National laboratories remain a strong and under-used route, but you must read the clearance and export-control language on the individual posting before applying.
- Standing policy
- When our own later evidence qualifies advice we have published, we say so in the next edition rather than quietly rewording it.
Who actually files, and why the usual advice is backwards
Every cap-exempt institution could sponsor. Far fewer demonstrably do. When a department says “we only do J-1”, the filing record is the evidence that this is one administrator's habit rather than an institutional policy.
| Institution | State | Tier | Postdoc petitions | Relative volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Michigan | MI | Elite | 179 | |
| Stanford University | CA | Elite | 129 | |
| Princeton University | NJ | Elite | 106 | |
| University of California San Francisco | CA | Elite | 99 | |
| Thomas Jefferson University | PA | T2–3 | 2 | |
| Creighton University | NE | T2–3 | 1 |
The standard advice is to target lower-ranked schools because they are supposedly more willing to sponsor. The filing record says the opposite. The four highest-volume postdoc sponsors in the country are all elite institutions. Advising a researcher to avoid them for immigration reasons sends them away from where the sponsorship actually happens.
The $103,265 proposal widens the gap enormously, and it is still only a proposal.
On 25 August, DHS proposed a $103,265 fee on every cap-subject H-1B petition (91 FR 54817, comments closing 24 September). Cap-exempt petitions — universities, affiliated nonprofits and nonprofit research organisations — are excluded. The same researcher, filed by a cap-exempt employer, faces roughly $960 in government fees. Filed by a cap-subject employer, six figures more.
It is a thirty-day comment period, and the arithmetic behind the figure is the kind of reasoning that draws serious objection. We are not telling anyone to rush a filing because of it, and we would be sceptical of anyone who does.
- What it justifies
- A conversation with a department that has been treating sponsorship as an expensive favour — not urgency, and not a decision made on a rule that does not yet exist.
What the sector actually pays
Wages here are the offered rate, annualised from the stated unit of pay. Where an employer filed a range, the low end is used, so every figure below is conservative.
| Benchmark | Value | What it means for a negotiation |
|---|---|---|
| Median offered wage | $67,830 | The midpoint of what cap-exempt employers actually put on certified petitions. |
| Median DOL prevailing floor | $57,970 | The legal minimum for the occupation and metro area. |
| Typical premium over floor | ≈17% | Institutions generally offer well above the floor, so the floor is rarely the constraint. |
| Lawrence Livermore National Lab | $128,916 | DOE national labs pay roughly double the academic median and are equally cap-exempt. |
The prevailing wage is the real objection to sponsorship, not the cost. If a posted salary already clears the OES prevailing wage for the relevant occupational code and metro area, the department's main obstacle to filing has already been met — and saying so out loud removes it.
Two fees: the $100,000 proclamation and the $103,265 proposal
Twice in twelve months Washington has tried to put a six-figure price on hiring an H-1B worker. One measure threatened the exempt sector; the other widens its advantage. They are easy to confuse because the amounts are close — and confusing them leads to bad decisions in both directions. The timeline carries both stories in order.
Proclamation 10973 takes effect
$100,000 payment required. No exemption for universities or nonprofit research.
D.D.C. upholds the proclamation
Chamber of Commerce & AAU v. DHS. Now on appeal, argued and undecided.
D. Mass. vacates it nationwide
Held the payment is a tax, not a fee; INA 212(f) does not reach it.
Administrative stay granted
Collection resumes temporarily while the appeal is briefed.
First Circuit denies the stay
“Failed to make a strong showing as to the critical likelihood-of-success factor.” Vacatur operative.
DHS proposes a $103,265 cap-subject fee
91 FR 54817. A separate track from the proclamation, reaching cap-subject petitions, expressly not cap-exempt filings.
Built-in sunset of the proclamation
Expires twelve months after the effective date, absent extension.
Comments close on the proposed fee
Thirty days from publication. Agencies must respond to substantive comments.