American Express
AXPThe Two-Name Game
American Express is not the first company you think of when someone says “H-1B abuse.” That's by design. They're quiet about it. Just a steady, methodical operation to move tech work to the cheapest zip code they can find while splitting filings across two legal entities.
AmEx files H-1B applications under “American Express Travel Related Services” (ranked #80) AND “American Express Company” (ranked #433). Two names. One company. Combine them and the numbers tell a very different story.
3 total denials across all years (0.1% of filings) - too small to display on this chart.
The Phoenix Play: Geographic Arbitrage on Steroids
AmEx is headquartered in New York City. Cost of living index: 187. Most of their H-1B workers? Phoenix, Arizona. Cost of living index: 97. Damn near half.
887 H-1B workers in Phoenix. 384 in New York. More than double. And they're paying nearly the same wages, about $140K in Phoenix, $145K in NYC. A $5,000 difference for a city that costs half as much to live in.
I've looked at dozens of companies. AmEx has the most aggressive geographic arbitrage I've seen. It's not even close.
This site no longer charts H-1B filings as a share of workforce. The ratio can blur U.S. employees, global employees, contractors, and offshore delivery headcount into one denominator.
Rows with a disclosed U.S.-employee denominator available here: 6. The analysis now uses filings, approvals, wage, worksite, and title concentration instead.
The Disappearing American Workforce
Only 34% of AmEx's workforce is US-based. Out of 76,800 total employees, about 22,000-26,000 are in the US. That number has barely moved in five years. Meanwhile total headcount keeps climbing.
This isn't a company struggling to find American talent. This is a company that figured out the cheapest possible way to staff its US operations.
The Wages: Middle of the Pack
AmEx pays 12.4% above prevailing wage in FY2025. Sounds decent until you realize Google pays 60%+. Apple pays 40%+. AmEx is paying the minimum needed to not look bad on paper.
With a 98%+ approval rate, USCIS isn't asking questions. No H-1B lawsuits on record. American Express has built a machine that technically follows every rule while extracting maximum value.
| # | Job Title | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Senior Engineer | 1,264 |
| 2 | Engineer | 637 |
| 3 | Senior Manager, Risk Management | 131 |
| 4 | Manager, Risk Management | 115 |
| 5 | Senior Engineering Manager | 113 |
| 6 | Engineering Director | 110 |
| 7 | Senior Manager, Product Development | 96 |
| 8 | Senior Infrastructure Engineer | 85 |
| 9 | Senior Quality Engineer | 83 |
| 10 | Senior Data Engineer | 67 |
Bottom Line
American Express optimized the H-1B program without ever breaking a rule. Two filing entities to split the numbers. Nearly all growth pushed offshore. US workers placed in Phoenix instead of NYC to exploit cost of living differentials. Wages pegged just above prevailing wage. Zero lawsuits.
If you're a software engineer in Phoenix wondering why salaries feel depressed, this is part of your answer. AmEx alone has nearly 900 H-1B workers in your city, paid at rates calibrated to the local prevailing wage, not the NYC salaries you'd expect from a Fortune 100 financial services company.
The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. Just not for you.
Company-by-company breakdowns, every week.
Raw data. No corporate spin. Which companies are suppressing tech wages in your city?
Data Sources
- LCA filings: DOL OFLC Disclosure Data & myvisajobs.com
- H-1B approvals: USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub & myvisajobs.com
- Salary data: myvisajobs.com aggregated from LCA disclosures
- Workforce: SEC 10-K annual filings (Item 1)
- BLS wages: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2023
- Geographic data: DOL LCA disclosure records, cost of living indices from BLS
- H-1B sponsor ranking: Business Insider, "The 20 Financial Firms That Apply for the Most H-1B Visas," September 24, 2025 - AmEx ranked 4th among financial firms
- India expansion: American Express newsroom, "American Express to Open State-of-the-Art Campus in India," May 2024 - largest office built from the ground up globally
- Offshore tech hiring: Computer Weekly, "American Express recruiting thousands of tech professionals," September 22, 2022 - 1,667 of 5,000 new tech roles targeted for India
- H-1B worker account: Hacker News thread (item 13362270), January 2017 - former full-time H-1B employee at AmEx described visa system as "indentured servitude" citing 7-year green card waits, suppressed wages, and employer-tied immigration status
- H-1B lawsuits: No H-1B-specific lawsuits, DOL wage violations, or DOJ immigration discrimination actions found against American Express as of March 2026 (confirmed via DOJ IER settlement database and DOL enforcement records)
- Restructuring: American Express announced workforce restructuring plan in 2024 involving layoffs and benefit changes (Intellizence, The Retirement Group)
- DOJ settlement (non-H-1B): United States v. American Express, $230M settlement for deceptive marketing of credit card and wire products, January 2025 (DOJ EDNY)
- Discrimination litigation (non-H-1B): Netzel v. American Express, class action filed August 2022 in Arizona federal court alleging racial discrimination against white employees via hiring quotas post-2020