Filing address: Evanston, ILworksites: IL, FL, MA, CA, GA (5 of 9 states)
Reported wages are what the employer filed with the Department of Labor — not actual take-home pay. Denials reflect individual case outcomes — not whether an employer sponsors. One LCA is not one job.
Not to be confused with LCA outcomes. An LCA is a Department of Labor filing that precedes the visa petition; nearly every employer's LCAs are certified at 99–100%, which tells you almost nothing about petition outcomes. The figures on this page come from USCIS petition decisions instead. The two are often reported interchangeably; they measure different things. Why these are two different datasets.
You are changing employers. That is the share of petitions like yours that Northwestern University had denied over the 5 fiscal years FY2021–FY2025 taken together — not in any single year. 97 change-of-employer petitions were decided across those years; 0 were denied. The year-by-year split is in the second table below. USCIS · FY2021–FY2025 combined
The table below splits petitions by filing type, over FY2021–FY2025 combined. The types do not face the same odds — find the row that matches your own situation.
| Filing type | Approved | Denied | n | Denied share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Change of employerYou move from another company to this one | 97 | 0 | 97 | 0% |
| New employmentFirst-time H-1B — subject to the annual lottery | 550 | 5 | 555 | 0.9% |
| ContinuationExtending an H-1B you already hold here | 300 | 5 | 305 | 1.6% |
| AmendedA change at the same employer | 23 | 0 | 23 | 0% |
| Change with same employerNew role, same employer | 92 | 2 | 94 | 2% |
| New concurrentA second, simultaneous H-1B | 4 | 0 | 4 | 4 decisions |
Where fewer than 20 petitions were decided we print the count instead of a percentage. A percentage drawn from a handful of cases reads like a probability, and it is not one. How the sample thresholds are set.
Year by year, change-of-employer petitions only. The headline above combines the FY2021–FY2025 rows of this table (marked in window); the other years are shown because the denial climate in earlier years was not the same one.
| Fiscal year | Approved | Denied | n | Denied share | Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 (through Q3) | 9 | 1 | 10 | 10 decisions | — |
| FY2025 | 11 | 0 | 11 | 11 decisions | in window |
| FY2024 | 26 | 0 | 26 | 0% | in window |
| FY2023 | 28 | 0 | 28 | 0% | in window |
| FY2022 | 20 | 0 | 20 | 0% | in window |
| FY2021 | 12 | 0 | 12 | 12 decisions | in window |
| FY2020 | 14 | 0 | 14 | 14 decisions | — |
| FY2019 | 10 | 1 | 11 | 11 decisions | — |
| FY2018 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 7 decisions | — |
| FY2017 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 9 decisions | — |
| FY2016 | 16 | 0 | 16 | 16 decisions | — |
| FY2015 | 19 | 0 | 19 | 19 decisions | — |
| FY2014 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 7 decisions | — |
| FY2013 | 20 | 0 | 20 | 0% | — |
| FY2012 | 16 | 1 | 17 | 17 decisions | — |
| FY2011 | 19 | 0 | 19 | 19 decisions | — |
| FY2010 | 22 | 1 | 23 | 4% | — |
| FY2009 | 24 | 0 | 24 | 0% | — |
Source USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub (I-129 petition decisions) ·Coverage FY2009–FY2026 (through Q3) ·Headline window FY2021–FY2025 combined · Updated 2026-08-28
They are different processes. A first-time petition must clear the annual lottery; a change of employer does not take a lottery slot. Averaging them into one "denial rate" hands the job-changer a number that is too high. The gap is systematic across employers, not a quirk of any one of them — which is why the headline above uses the change-of-employer figure rather than a blended one.
A single year of one employer's petitions is often a handful of cases, and a percentage drawn from a handful reads like a probability. Combining fiscal years raises the count — but only if the years belong to the same period. Across all employers in our data, the share of change-of-employer petitions denied ran at 9.54% in FY2018, 9.42% in FY2019 and 4.99% in FY2020, and has stayed between 1.28% and 1.99% in every one of the 5 years from FY2021 through FY2025. Averaging the earlier years together with FY2025 would not produce a steadier estimate; it would produce a number that describes no period at all. So the window stops where the earlier adjudication climate begins, and every figure drawn from it is labelled with the years it covers.
FY2025 median, from 227 certified filings. DOL LCA · FY2025
| Fiscal year | Filed wage | Filings (n) | Certified | Withdrawn | Denied |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 (through Q3) | $71,448 · median of 178 | 178 | 178 | 101 | 0 |
| FY2025 | $72,760 · median of 227 | 227 | 230 | 98 | 0 |
| FY2024 | $70,000 · median of 247 | 247 | 249 | 92 | 0 |
| FY2023 | $65,538 · median of 202 | 202 | 202 | 114 | 0 |
| FY2022 | $65,915 · median of 246 | 246 | 246 | 93 | 0 |
| FY2021 | $64,566 · median of 175 | 175 | 175 | 59 | 0 |
Source U.S. Department of Labor — OFLC LCA disclosure files (ETA-9035) ·Coverage FY2021–FY2026 (through Q3) ·Updated 2026-08-28 ·Basis certified filings only; records whose wage unit is clearly mis-entered are excluded ·how wages are computed
| Job title | Filed wage | Wage sample (n) |
|---|---|---|
Postdoctoral ResearcherBy seniority (1)(unstated): $62,500 · median of 293 | $62,500 median of 293 | 293 |
Assistant ProfessorBy seniority (1)(unstated): $130,000 · median of 105 | $130,000 median of 105 | 105 |
Research AssociateBy seniority (1)Senior: $77,965 · median of 10 | $77,965 median of 10 | 10 |
Data ScientistBy seniority (1)(unstated): 6 filings — too few for a median | 6 filings — too few for a median | 6 |
Data AnalystBy seniority (1)(unstated): 4 filings — too few for a median | 4 filings — too few for a median | 4 |
AccountantBy seniority (1)Senior: $84,219 · 1 filing | $84,219 1 filing | 1 |
Network EngineerBy seniority (1)(unstated): $73,561 · 1 filing | $73,561 1 filing | 1 |
Software EngineerBy seniority (1)(unstated): $92,700 · 1 filing | $92,700 1 filing | 1 |
Systems AnalystBy seniority (1)(unstated): $87,878 · 1 filing | $87,878 1 filing | 1 |
Titles come from the job title as filed, reduced to a known family — see how titles are grouped. Wages are medians of certified filings; a seniority breakdown is shown where the filing stated one.
Source U.S. Department of Labor — OFLC LCA disclosure files (ETA-9035) · Coverage FY2021–FY2026 (through Q3) ·Basis certified filings with a stated wage; medians, not averages
Every LCA names a prevailing wage — the government's reference rate for that job, in that place, at one of four experience tiers. Level I is entry-level; Level IV is the most senior. Two things matter here: which tier the employer files at, and how far above that reference it actually offers.
Filed wages sit 20.8% above the prevailing wage for the same jobs and tiers. A figure near zero means the employer files at close to the government reference rate; a large one means it files well above.
| Wage tier as filed | Filings (n) | Filed wage | Prevailing wage | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level I | 977 | $67,410 · median of 977 | $55,349 · median of 977 | +21.8% |
| Level II | 87 | $85,000 · median of 87 | $67,995 · median of 87 | +25% |
| Level III | 119 | $81,058 · median of 119 | $70,054 · median of 119 | +15.7% |
| Level IV | 18 | $92,429 · median of 18 | $75,639 · median of 18 | +22.2% |
| Not stated on the filing | 74 | $60,000 · median of 74 | $53,914 · median of 74 | +11.3% |
Source U.S. Department of Labor — OFLC LCA disclosure files (ETA-9035, prevailing wage level as filed) ·Coverage FY2021–FY2026 (through Q3) · Updated 2026-08-28 ·Basis certified filings only; medians, not averages
41 permanent labor certification applications were decided across FY2021–FY2026 (through Q3), 11 of them in FY2026 (through Q3).
| Fiscal year | Certified | Certified-expired | Denied | Withdrawn | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 (through Q3) | 7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
| FY2025 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
| FY2024 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| FY2023 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| FY2022 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| FY2021 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
Source U.S. Department of Labor — OFLC PERM disclosure files (ETA-9089) ·Coverage FY2021–FY2026 (through Q3) · Updated 2026-08-28
Source State WARN layoff notices ·States loaded CA (through 2026-08-24) ·Updated 2026-08-28
One company files under many spellings and many legal entities. We combine them so the numbers above cover the whole company rather than one spelling of it — and we list what we combined, so you can check the grouping instead of taking our word for it.
| Name as filed | FEIN (last 4) | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| Northwestern University | 7817 | 1,837 |
Showing the 1 most common of 2 filing names.
Different tax IDs in this list are normal — large companies file through several legal entities. We never group by tax ID alone: placeholder and mistyped IDs are common enough that doing so would merge unrelated companies. Grouping here comes from the filing names themselves, plus recorded human judgement where two entities are publicly one company.
Roles. Northwestern University is among the top filers for Postdoctoral Researcher. Those pages show the median filed wage for the role across all employers.
Places. It is among the top filers in Chicago, IL and Evanston, IL. Filings are counted by worksite, not by where the company is headquartered.
These are the city and role pages on which this employer ranks among the largest filers — not a complete list of everywhere it files.
Browse all cities and job titles, or read how filings are grouped.
These employers filed LCAs but have fewer than 10 certified records, which is not enough to build a page on. They are listed so that "not shown" never gets read as "does not sponsor".
10Jumps Inc. (9) · 3Red Partners LLC (9) · 4S Technologies, LLC (9) · AKA Comp Solutions, Inc. (9) · Amur Technologies, Inc. (9) · ARB Trading Group LP (9) · Arch & Lake LLP (9) · Arcus Technologies, Inc. dba Kat Tech Systems, Inc. (9)
Showing the 8 with the most filings — 8+ employers in IL are below the threshold. This list is truncated, not complete.