Why CRAs are almost invisible in the visa data

When we processed the full H-1B disclosure file, over a million filings, one absence stood out. Biostatisticians appeared nearly 400 times among certified clinical research filings. Statistical programmers and clinical data managers, over a hundred each. Clinical research associates, the CRAs who are the largest single profession in the industry, appeared just 18 times. The most common clinical research job is nearly invisible in the visa record, and the reason is worth understanding.

The finding

Across certified H-1B filings for fiscal 2026 through Q2, we counted only 18 for CRAs, at a median of about $87,825. For a role that employs far more people than biostatistics and programming combined, that is almost nothing. The quantitative functions flood the visa data; the monitoring function is a rounding error in it. Same industry, opposite visibility.

Why the gap exists

CRAs barely appear in the H-1B record because the role is filled domestically. Monitoring is field work: it requires being physically present at US sites, traveling a US territory, and holding relationships with US investigators. Employers hire CRAs from the local labor market and have little reason to sponsor a visa for a role defined by domestic presence. The quantitative roles are the opposite: desk work, globally recruited, hard to fill locally, and routinely sponsored. The visa record is a map of which functions employers reach overseas to fill, and monitoring is not one of them.

What the invisibility tells you

This is not just a data curiosity. It says something real about the two kinds of clinical research career. The quantitative roles sit in a global labor market, where a biostatistician in the US competes with, and is recruited alongside, biostatisticians worldwide. That global supply is part of why the visa data on them is so rich, and it is a force on their pay in both directions. The CRA role sits in a national labor market, insulated from direct visa competition but exposed to domestic supply and demand, and increasingly to the offshoring of the trials themselves.

Neither position is strictly better. But they are different, and the visa data makes the difference visible. If you are a CRA, your pay is set in a US market that federal wage filings barely touch, which is precisely why the public data on your role is so thin, and why self-reported data matters more for you than for almost anyone else in the industry.

What the data cannot capture

The visa record shows which roles get sponsored, not what they pay across the whole workforce. For CRAs specifically, the public record is nearly silent: 18 filings cannot describe a profession of tens of thousands. That silence is the entire problem this community exists to fix. The government filings light up the quantitative roles and leave the largest clinical research profession in the dark. The only way to light it is for CRAs to report what they earn. If you monitor trials, add your datapoint. You are the data the government does not collect.