Weighting the H-1B Lottery: Implications for Worker and Diversity and Employment Concentration

Chad Sparber

No 18333, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The H-1B program allows firms in the United States to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. Demand outstrips supply, and the government allocates status through a random lottery. In September 2025, The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a new lottery process that would weight applications favoring workers receiving higher wage offers. This short article demonstrates that a weighted lottery would increase the ethnic diversity of H-1B recipients. Implications for H-1B employment concentration are particularly sensitive to threshold cutoffs used to construct weights.

Keywords: lottery; H-1B; skilled workers; ethnic diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
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