Yappy Headed YOH wage study is flawed again

As reported by InformationWeek, Yoh has prepared a press release that again proclaims that tech workers are being paid "near record wages."

First Yoh unethically downplays that these wages are only contract wages, which could be as short as one day. They bear no relation to the wages paid to full-time employees, which are substantially lower. Yoh should make that more clear in the future.

Yoh fails to disclose that their "all-time high" wage determination does not factor in inflation. They use a base of 100 in January 2001, reaching 113.60 in Week 36 of 2007, or a 13.6% increase in wages over 6.5 years.

But according to this BLS calculator, inflation during the same period would have raised 100 to 117.72.

Thus when adjusted for inflation, the Yoh study actually finds that IT contract wages have continued to erode during this decade.

Yoh's study is further evidence that H-1b are underpaid. While Yoh cited $50 and $80 per hour as only "average wages," The average H-1b programmer -- who presumably is being brought in because they have the "hot" skills -- is paid about $52,000, according to a 2005 study.

Virtually NO H-1b LCA is for $50 per hour, and I've never seen an LCA for a software developer approach the "average" wage of $80 per hour.

Yoh's website fails to disclose salary ranges for most of their positions. Yoh's LCA filing for H-1b are here - but most are not software development occupations.

We had addressed the bias in Yoh's studies last April - nothing has changed.

Yappy-headed Yoh Index reveals dramatic underpayment of H-1b workers

As reported by the SF Chronicle and InformationWeek, Yoh conducted a survey of technology wages, finding that "highly-skilled technology professionals are making more money than ever." The survey claims very high average wages for typical IT jobs:

• NET Developer $53.40
• Database Administrator $59.80
• ETL Developer $66.52
• Hardware Engineer $75.68
• Java Developer $57.27
• SAP® Functional Consultant $76.67
• Technical Consultant $83.72

These are the types of skills that employers are filling with H-1b workers, and these figures suggest a median salary well into six figures. But the average pay for H-1b workers performing these jobs is roughly half of these rates. See the figure in this article, for example.

If such jobs exist, where are they? Not at Yoh Consulting. A search of their openings reveals that Yoh pays substantially below what they claim is an "average wage":

• .NET Developer: $60,000 to $75,000 per year
• ETL Developer: $55,000 to $57,000 per year

Furthermore Yoh pays its own H-1b workers around $50,000 for most positions.

Proposal: In order to protect the wages of U.S. workers, USCIS should only approve those H-1b applications that pay at least the average wages of the Yoh study. Under that basic wage protection it's unlikely that more than 1% of the pending 133,000 applications would be approved.