Capital One
COFThe bank that figured out you can call yourself a “tech company” while paying H-1B workers the legal minimum and hiding your workforce demographics behind a maze of subsidiary filings.
The Prevailing Wage Floor Company
Capital One stands out for a very specific reason: they pay closer to the prevailing wage floor than almost anyone else in this dataset. An average of just 5.3% above prevailing wage. Many LCA records show literally 0% gap.
Capital One markets itself as a technology company that happens to have a banking charter. They run Super Bowl ads. They poach VPs from Google. And then they pay their H-1B workers the bare legal minimum.
The Numbers Don't Lie (But Capital One Tries)
Those are big numbers for a company that refuses to tell you how many of its workers are in the US versus overseas. Go read their 10-K. They report “approximately 50,000 employees” but won't break out domestic versus international headcount.
Their filings aren't even under “Capital One.” They file as “Capital One Services, LLC.” Entity splitting, a classic move that makes it harder to track total H-1B volume.
The $196K Question
Capital One's average H-1B salary in FY2025 is $196K. They were paying $110K not long ago. A 78% increase. Did their workers become 78% more productive? No. The DOL raised wage level thresholds, and Capital One had to adjust to keep getting approvals.
This is what “gaming wage thresholds” looks like. Pay exactly enough to clear the regulatory bar, and structure job titles and locations to keep that bar as low as possible.
The Richmond Play
Over half their sponsored workers are in two Virginia cities. Richmond has a cost of living index of 96, below the national average. Lower COL means lower prevailing wages, which means you can pay H-1B workers less while meeting legal requirements.
When you're already paying 5.3% above the floor, every dollar counts. It's wage arbitrage with geographic characteristics.
Whistleblowers, Kickbacks, and Cognizant
The whistleblower reports around Capital One are too specific to ignore.
Whistleblower Allegation: H-1B Kickback Scheme
Multiple reports allege that Indian managers steered contracts to specific bodyshop consulting firms, then pocketed the difference between the billing rate and the worker's actual pay.
Capital One's Vendor: Cognizant
In 2024, Cognizant lost a landmark discrimination case. Finding: non-Indian workers terminated at 8.4x the rate of Indian workers. Capital One chose to keep doing business with them.
The Opacity Problem
No public race or ethnicity data. None. Not in SEC filings, not in DEI reports. In 2025, when every major tech company publishes an annual diversity report, Capital One just doesn't.
They won't tell you domestic vs. international headcount. They file under a subsidiary name. They pay the prevailing wage floor. They use vendors with documented discrimination problems. Companies that have nothing to hide don't work this hard to make sure you can't see anything.
| # | Job Title | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sr Manager Software Engineering | 234 |
| 2 | Lead Software Engineer | 214 |
| 3 | Senior Data Analyst | 204 |
| 4 | Senior Lead Software Engineer | 184 |
| 5 | Principal Data Analyst | 111 |
Get the Full Picture
Deep dives on H-1B data, wage suppression, and corporate labor practices every week. No corporate sponsors. Just data.
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
- Whistleblower reports: Public court filings and media reporting
- Cognizant discrimination data: Palmer et al. v. Cognizant (2024)