What EB-3 jobs pay: the real figures, from the government file
Every PERM case carries a government-set wage floor. Housekeeping runs $18,574 a year, janitorial $23,005.
Bangla Vibes · 5 September 2021 · updated 18 September 2026আমেরিকায় কোন পেশায় কেমন আয় - USA Popular Jobs EB3 Jobs & Salary 2021 - 2022The video is older than this article, which was researched separately, so the two may not cover exactly the same ground.
What EB-3 pays is usually somebody's word. Fifteen dollars an hour. Forty thousand a year.
You do not have to guess. A PERM application requires the employer to state the government-determined minimum wage for the role, and that figure is in the public file.
So I pulled the wage on all 1,612 Bangladeshi cases, converting hourly and weekly figures to annual.
What this number is
It is the prevailing wage: what the government considers normal pay for that job in that area.
The employer must pay at least this. They may pay more, and many do.
So the figures below are a floor, not a ceiling. But knowing the floor tells you where the thing starts.
The wages on Bangladeshi cases
| Job | Cases | Median per year |
|---|---|---|
| Maids and housekeeping | 79 | $18,574 |
| Food preparation and serving | 33 | $19,011 |
| Fast food and counter | 106 | $20,259 |
| Food batchmakers | 79 | $20,571 |
| Restaurant cooks | 19 | $20,987 |
| Janitors and cleaners | 330 | $23,005 |
| Home health aides | 62 | $25,813 |
| Food preparation workers | 20 | $26,208 |
| Production helpers | 177 | $26,749 |
| Personal care aides | 61 | $27,144 |
| Labourers and freight movers | 40 | $28,475 |
| Cleaners of vehicles and equipment | 34 | $28,538 |
| Team assemblers | 31 | $30,451 |
| Slaughterers and meat packers | 22 | $32,115 |
| Retail supervisors | 17 | $56,410 |
| Materials engineers | 43 | $105,830 |
| Software developers | 53 | $107,640 |
One thing jumps out of the list. Bottom to top, the number grows roughly sixfold.
Now hold that against 20 lakh
20 lakh taka is about 16 to 17 thousand dollars.
Take janitorial work, since it is the largest group at 330 cases. $23,005 a year.
Now the arithmetic. Off that comes federal tax, state tax, Social Security, Medicare. Then rent, food, transport, phone, insurance.
Anyone living here knows what $23,000 leaves a person at the end of a year. Not much.
Which means clearing the agent's 16,000 dollars alone takes several years, assuming everything goes right.
And how likely everything goes right is a separate calculation. Of those 1,612 cases, 477 were still alive at the end.
What Level I means, and why it matters
The government grades each job's wage in four tiers, Level I to Level IV. More experience and responsibility, higher tier.
Across the Bangladeshi cases:
| Wage level | Cases |
|---|---|
| Level I (most entry-level) | 1,216 |
| Level II | 108 |
| Level III | 80 |
| Level IV | 54 |
75% at the bottom tier. So the figures above are not merely low, they are the lowest tier of those jobs too.
The same janitorial role at Level IV would pay more. In the file the highest janitorial case is $33,987 and the lowest $18,034.
The comparison nobody makes
Put two lines of the same file side by side.
| Janitor | Software developer | |
|---|---|---|
| Bangladeshi cases | 330 | 53 |
| Median annual wage | $23,005 | $107,640 |
| Sub-category | Unskilled | Professional |
| Backlog today | 53 months | 25 months |
The same EB-3 visa. One pays four and a half times more and queues for less than half as long.
I am not suggesting everyone become a software developer. I am saying that if you hold a degree or a real skill, leaving it out and joining the unskilled queue is an expensive decision. Expensive in both directions.
What to check when someone quotes a wage
Three questions.
Which state? Prevailing wages are local. The same job pays differently in Mississippi and California.
Which wage level? Level I against Level III is a wide gap.
Hourly or annual? If they quote hourly, multiply by 2080 and see what the year comes to. The hourly figure often sounds larger than it is.
Better still, get the job title and the state and look it up in the DOL file yourself. That is exactly how the table above was built, and anyone can download it.