The average H1B in tech pays $86,164/year

Since 2012 the US tech industry has sponsored 176,075 H1B work visas. Most of them paid $60,660 to $111,668 per year (1 standard deviation). The best city for an H1B is Kirkland, WA with an average individual salary $39,465 above local household median. Median household salary is a good proxy for cost of living in an area.

Best places to be in tech

Darker color means bigger difference between median household salary
and individual tech salary. Gray means lack of tech salary data.

Salary distribution

Histogram shows tech salary distribution compared to median household income.
Sources: 2014 US census data for median household incomes, h1bdata.info for tech salaries (filtered by "software")