Companies are supposed to pay an H1-B workers the prevailing wage. But the fact is that real wages are a very wide range that would depend on your exact skills and competence. So companies can get away with paying an H1-B worker less than his real market value and the worker cannot easily switch jobs. If the worker could easily switch jobs, then there is no real incentive for the company to hire a worker and pay him lower wages (). Because, very soon he will switch to another company that pays him his real wage. The problem with the H1-B system is that the law is based on the assumption that fare wages can be enforced by statute as opposed to by ensuring competition.

() One can argue that large companies might have incentives to bring in more H1-Bs to increase the overall labor pool, which in turn will reduce wages for everyone. This can partially be offset by having high fees for H1-B workers.