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Bank of America

BAC
USCIS APPROVAL RATE: 99.1%A major U.S. bank whose H-1B filings include Bank of America and Merrill Lynch employer rows.
LCA Filings (FY2025)
854
Total Approvals (FY2023)
323
Approval Rate
99.1%
Avg H-1B Salary
$157,442
BLS Market Median
$130,160

Bank of America's Technology Workforce Is Visible in LCAs

Bank of America is a bank, but its filing footprint includes the technology stack behind modern finance. This page combines Bank of America, Bank of America N.A., Merrill Lynch, and related employer-name variants.

Across FY2020 through FY2025, those rows add up to 5,527 Labor Condition Applications. Including the FY2026 partial-year rows, the total reaches 5,611. FY2025 alone accounts for 854 LCA filings.

The USCIS series shown here totals 2,622 approvals across the available approval rows. Where FY2025 rows are initial approvals only, the page labels them that way. LCA filings are not headcount, hired workers, or proof that a specific American worker was replaced.

Key finding
5,527
Full-year LCA filings after combining Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and related employer names.
LCA Filings by Year

12 total denials across all years (0.2% of filings) - too small to display on this chart.

H-1B Approval Rate Over Time

Merrill and Bank Names Belong Together

Bank of America N.a. leads the count, while Merrill Lynch and related names help capture the employer footprint customers and workers experience as Bank of America.

The peak year in the full-year series is FY2021, with 1,299 filings. FY2026 currently shows 84 rows and should be read as a partial-year value, not as a final decline.

Entity
Bank of America N.a.
5,024
Entity
Merrill Lynch
527
Entity
Bank of America Corporation
29
Entity
Merrill Lynch Commodities Inc.
23
Entity
First National Bank of America
4
Entity
Merrill Lynch Commodities, Inc.
3
Workforce Share Not Used
Metric intentionally suppressed

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: 0. The analysis now uses filings, approvals, wage, worksite, and title concentration instead.

Avg H-1B Salary vs BLS Market Rate

Finance-Sector Cuts Need a Tech-Labor Lens

Reporting covered Bank of America cutting investment-banking roles in 2025. That is financial-sector workforce context, not proof of immigration substitution.

Bank of America's investment-banking cuts are context, not proof of visa substitution. The filings show the bank's continuing demand for technical and financial labor.

The source is local business reporting, so the narrative stays conservative.

Key finding
854
FY2025 LCA filings for the Bank of America employer boundary used here.

Banking Work Now Runs Through Software Roles

The leading occupation is Software Developers, Applications, and the leading title is Vice President; Software Engineer III; the labor-market signal is technology inside a financial institution.

For FY2025, the average H-1B wage in the filtered salary extract is $157,442, compared with an average prevailing-wage benchmark of $125,375. That is a $32,067 spread over the legal wage floor.

Top H-1B Occupations

The Worksites Follow the Bank's Tech Hubs

Charlotte, Nc leads with 1,778 rows, with other finance and technology markets filling out the map.

Charlotte, Nc
1,778
New York, Ny
834
Jersey City, Nj
672
Pennington, Nj
455

The Green-Card Layer Extends the Bank Pipeline

Bank of America records 829 PERM labor-certification cases from FY2020 through FY2025, including 167 in FY2025.

PERM records are a different process from H-1B petitions, but they matter because the sponsorship timeline can tie a worker to an employer for years.

Want the full investigation?

I publish the data, charts, and company-by-company breakdowns as they come out.

Top Job Titles
TitleCount
Vice President; Software Engineer III422
Vice President; Feature Lead - Technology276
Vice President; Software Engineer II150
Vice President / Software Engineer III143
Vice President / Feature Lead - Technology135
Vice President; Quantitative Finance Analyst117
Vice President / Quantitative Finance Analyst92
Officer; Tech Analyst Program83
Assistant Vice President; Software Engineer II79
Assistant Vice President; Quantitative Finance Analyst74
Data Sources
  • LCA filings and salary data: DOL OFLC disclosure rows mapped by the employer-name boundary used for this investigation.
  • H-1B approvals: USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub CSV rows for FY2020-FY2023, plus FY2025 hub initial approvals where available.
  • PERM data: DOL OFLC PERM disclosure rows mapped with the same employer-name boundary.
  • Charlotte Business Journal investment-banking cuts context, Mar. 2025.
  • BLS wage comparison: OEWS May 2023 national median for software developers.

Caveat: LCA filings are not H-1B petitions or hired workers. FY2025 USCIS hub rows are initial approvals only, so denial rates are not computed for those rows.