H-1B Visas and Wages in Accounting: Evidence from Big 4 Payroll and the Ethics of H-1B Visas

We use payroll data from a Big 4 accounting firm to examine the starting wage differentials for H-1B visa holders. Prior research in other industries has found mixed results, but primarily relies on surveyed salary data. We observe that relative to U.S. citizen new hires—matched on office, position, and time of hire—newly hired accountants with H-1B visas receive starting salaries that are lower by approximately 10%. This finding calls into question the efficacy of regulatory mandates thought to prevent H-1B visa holders from being paid less than U.S. citizens in similar roles. In further tests, we find evidence that the hiring of H-1B visa holders has no or some small positive effect on the wages of peer U.S. citizen new hires (weakly indicative of complementarities or synergies), but no evidence of H-1B hiring driving down the wages for U.S. citizen peer new hires.