How Big Is It ?

Comment from a recent NY Times article on H1Bs in bailout banks:

Once and for all, H1B workers are NOT paid less, it is not a cheap substitute for American labor force ...

- Posted by "temporary alien"

From Wikipedia on H1Bs:

The US governments OES office's data indicates that 90% of H-1B IT wages were below the median US wage for the same occupation.

From an in-depth article from University of California (Davis ) about the temporary employment and H1B visas:

Annual revenues for the industry [ including non-IT categories ] are expected to be $88 billion in 2001 ...

Note that the most recent estimate I can find ( subject to revision ) is an estimate of temporary and H1B industry revenue in 2001. Even Wikipedia failed me this time. And the old estimate itself is suspect enough, what part of it is IT-related ?

As a rough estimate, one might suggest 300,000 legal "temporary" IT workers/year X an average of $50,000/worker/year = $15 billion per year. The actual number of IT workers ( that is, legals in all visa categories such as H1B and PERM visas plus people overstaying their H1B visas plus outright illegal workers ) might be nearer 500,000. [ Note that current information as of June 2009 suggests that the true number for all categoreis might be higher ! ]

The $/worker/year rate of $50,000 may be fairly realistic, if taken as the bill-out rate to the agency, not what the worker nets ( maybe an average of $16,000/year income ? ).

In any case, why aren't revenue estimates available for the H1B employment in the U.S.A ?

I would hazard a guess about the reason for this mysterious statistical void - no one in American government or business really wants the public to know the scale of the H1B industry, or wants us to know how bad the situation is for employment of Americans in the American technology sector.