Husys says pre-vetted, already-interviewed candidates in India can now be legally onboarded in as little as eight hours, a direct answer to a visa system US employers say has become too expensive and too unpredictable to plan around.

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / September 22, 2026 / US employers that have spent 2026 trying to sponsor H-1B talent are running into a version of the same problem twice: the cost of winning has gone up, and the odds of winning have gone down. Husys, an India-based HR outsourcing and Employer of Record (EOR) provider operating since 2002, says the response it is seeing from CFOs, CHROs and VPs of Engineering is no longer “let’s try the lottery again next year.” It’s a permanent shift toward hiring the same caliber of talent directly in India, often the very engineers a company had already interviewed and wanted to hire before the visa math changed.

A $100,000 Fee, Struck Down, Reinstated, and Still Under Appeal

A presidential proclamation issued September 19, 2025 imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions requiring consular processing, applicable to petitions filed after September 21, 2025. Nine months later, a US District Court in Massachusetts ruled on June 8, 2026 that the fee functions as an unlawful tax that only Congress has the authority to impose, only for the same court to grant the government’s emergency motion for a stay on June 12, 2026, putting the fee back into effect. The government formally filed its appeal with the First Circuit Court of Appeals on June 18, 2026, and the fee remains in effect today, pending that ruling.

For a CFO, the dollar figure is only part of the problem. A fee that has been struck down, reinstated, and sent to appellate review inside a single quarter is difficult to build a hiring budget around at all, and that unpredictability, employers say, is proving to be as strong an argument for offshore hiring as the cost itself.

The fee applies specifically to new petitions requiring consular processing; it does not apply to extensions, amendments, or most changes of status for workers already inside the US.

The Full Cost Stack

  • Baseline sponsorship, filing fees, legal fees and compliance, typically exceeds $9,400 per hire before any salary is paid, with large employers filing new petitions in 2026 facing $7,045-$14,850 depending on attorney fees and processing speed.
  • Layer in the standard employer-burden multiplier and recruiting costs, and a single fully-loaded H-1B software engineer hire runs $200,000-$215,000 in first-year cost before the $100,000 fee is even added.
  • Where the fee applies, total first-year cost for one consular-processed H-1B software engineer can exceed $300,000, before the employee’s US salary itself.
  • Employers pursuing a green card for that same hire should plan for an additional $20,000-$40,000 across the PERM and I-140/I-485 stages.

The Odds Got Worse Too: A Wage-Weighted Lottery

Cost isn’t the only thing working against employers. Effective February 27, 2026, DHS replaced the random H-1B lottery with a wage-weighted selection system: registrants are entered multiple times depending on Department of Labor wage level, four entries at Level IV, three at Level III, two at Level II, and just one at Level I. The rule has already run through its first live cycle, in the March 2026 registration for the FY2027 cap.

The practical effect falls hardest on exactly the roles many startups and mid-market companies most want to sponsor. Historically, 83% of H-1B petitions have concentrated at Wage Levels I-II, meaning the large majority of past registrants now face meaningfully reduced odds unless employers raise offered wages significantly. DHS’s own analysis projects the rule will drive $502 million in first-year wage increases and an $858 million annual wage transfer away from Level I roles, the government’s own numbers confirming that entry-level and early-career positions are squeezed out by design.

The Talent Was Never the Bottleneck

The visa system, not the talent pool, is the constraint. India’s tech sector direct employment is projected to reach roughly 6 million professionals in FY26, adding around 135,000 jobs in a single year, with the sector on track to cross $315 billion in the same period, according to NASSCOM, India’s technology industry association. India’s Global Capability Center ecosystem, foreign companies’ own engineering and innovation hubs based in India has added more than 500 new centers and 1,000 new business units in the past five years alone, a direct signal that global companies are already committing capital to India-based teams. Separately, the India Skills Report 2026 found Computer Science and IT graduates carry an 80% employability rate, the highest of any discipline, with AI/ML-related roles seeing 600% year-on-year job growth.

The roles available go well beyond engineering: software, DevOps, QA, data and AI/ML engineering, product management, customer success, finance and accounting operations, and design are all represented at scale in India’s GCC ecosystem.

The Dollar Comparison

Below is average base salary, US versus India, sourced independently on both sides, a different measure from the fully-loaded H-1B cost figures above, and worth keeping separate in any internal budget conversation.

Across key technical and operational roles, the disparity in average base compensation remains substantial. For instance, Software Engineers command an average base salary of $130,160 in the US compared to $9,400 (₹8,14,387) in India, a ratio of approximately 14x.

DevOps Engineers see an even wider spread at nearly 17x ($144,629 in the US versus $8,700 / ₹7,54,212 in India).

Meanwhile, Financial Analysts average $99,890 in the US compared to $6,900 (₹5,97,666) in India (~14x), and Customer Service Representatives average $46,100 in the US versus $3,900 (₹3,37,523) in India (~12x).

The headline comparison for a CFO: a company can hire a mid-to-senior India-based engineer, salary plus EOR service fee and statutory employer contributions, for roughly what it costs just to file and legally clear a single H-1B petition in 2026, before that employee’s US salary is paid at all.

What This Doesn’t Solve and Shouldn’t Pretend To

None of this is a substitute for good planning. India is 9.5 to 13.5 hours ahead of US time zones depending on coast, and real-time collaboration requires a deliberate overlap window or a follow-the-sun handoff, it doesn’t happen automatically. A new India-based hire, like any new hire, needs onboarding time before reaching full velocity; “hire today, ship tomorrow” isn’t a realistic framing even when legal onboarding itself is fast. And termination, notice and severance obligations in India are governed by statute rather than at-will convention, including inside EOR arrangements, and work differently than US employers may expect. This is not cheap labor, it’s access to a genuinely deep technical talent market at a different cost structure, and treating it as anything less does a disservice to both the client and the talent.

India’s Labour Codes: A Real Compliance Lift, and a More Predictable Framework Ahead

Running alongside the H-1B story is a second regulatory shift that matters directly to any US company already employing people in India, or planning to. On November 21, 2025, the Government of India notified all four of its new labour codes as enforceable law, replacing 29 legacy central labour statutes, the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. Draft central rules followed on December 30, 2025, clarifying FAQs were issued March 16, 2026, and the final Central Rules were notified on May 8, 2026.

The part most US coverage misses: labour is a concurrent subject in India, and central rules only govern where the central government is the “appropriate government.” As of March 2026, six states : Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, had notified final rules across all four codes, with more than a dozen additional states having taken significant steps and the remainder expected through mid-2026. A company with employees across multiple Indian cities is, in effect, tracking several overlapping compliance timelines at once.

The most consequential single change is the new “50% wage rule”: basic pay plus dearness allowance must now equal at least 50% of total remuneration, capping allowances at 50% and raising the base used to calculate provident fund, gratuity, bonus and leave encashment. Fixed-term employees also gain parity with permanent staff on wages, PF, ESI, insurance, leave and working conditions, and new OSH obligations, annual health check-ups, crèche facilities at defined thresholds, formal appointment letters and grievance redressal committees, are now mandatory rather than best practice. None of this carries an exemption for branch offices, liaison offices or subsidiaries of foreign companies.

The CFO Bottom Line

Statutory cost per India employee rises modestly through 2026 as the 50% wage rule and new OSH obligations phase in. From 2027 onward, that cost should stabilize and become far more predictable, as a single four-code framework replaces the patchwork of 29 overlapping laws it consolidated. Short-term: expect a compliance lift. Medium-term: expect fewer surprises.

There is also a currency tailwind worth noting, with the usual caveat that FX moves in both directions: the Indian rupee depreciated 9.88% against the US dollar in FY26, its sharpest annual decline in 14 years, and continued sliding to a record low near ₹96.34/USD by mid-May 2026. For a US company paying India-based salaries in rupees, that movement means every dollar of payroll budget currently buys more Indian talent than it did twelve months ago, a live, if not guaranteed, offset against rising statutory costs.

Where Husys Fits: From Interview to Payroll in Hours, Not Months

Husys positions itself as the operational layer that turns both of these shifts, a harder H-1B system and a fast-moving Indian labour-law landscape, from open questions into a managed process. For a US company that has already interviewed and selected a candidate in India, Husys says its EOR infrastructure can convert an offer into a fully compliant, on-payroll hire in as little as eight hours, handling the employment contract, statutory registrations, payroll setup and benefits enrollment on the company’s behalf, without the company needing to establish its own legal entity in India.

On the compliance side, Husys tracks state-by-state labour code rule notifications as they land, restructures compensation to the 50% wage rule where it applies, and keeps fixed-term and gig-style arrangements compliant as the rules continue to phase in through 2026, the same work a US company would otherwise need in-house India legal counsel to perform.

Husys has operated in India’s HR outsourcing and EOR market since 2002. The company states it is India’s first NSE-listed HR company and holds ISO certification, and reports serving more than 5,000 clients, having enabled 500+ companies’ global expansion into India through its PEO/EOR services. Following its 2022 acquisition by People2.0, described at the time as the world’s largest global EOR/AOR services platform, Husys now operates as part of a compliance network spanning more than 150 countries, pairing India-specific depth with global reach.

The Bottom Line

US companies aren’t moving hiring to India because H-1B failed them once. They’re building permanent offshore-first hiring plans because the underlying economics and odds have structurally changed in 2026, a $100,000 fee tied up in appellate litigation, a lottery redesigned to work against early-career roles, and a domestic talent pool that was never actually the constraint. Husys says it exists to make the alternative operationally simple: the same candidate a company already wanted to hire, working legally and compliantly, often within the same business day the offer is signed.

Companies evaluating what an offshore-first hiring plan could look like for their own team can reach out to Husys to discuss specific roles, timelines and compliance requirements.

About Husys

Husys is an India-based HR outsourcing, PEO and Employer of Record (EOR) provider that has operated in the Indian market since 2002. Husys states it is India’s first NSE-listed HR company and holds ISO certification, and reports having enabled the global expansion of 500+ companies into India across more than 5,000 client relationships. Since its 2022 acquisition by People2.0, Husys operates as part of a global EOR/AOR network spanning 150+ countries.

Media Contact:

Suresh Kumar
VP of Growth
reach@husys.com
+91 72040 12636

Editorial note: client counts, certifications and the “first NSE-listed” claim, along with the stated eight-hour onboarding timeline, should be reconfirmed with Husys marketing/legal before publication. The H-1B fee’s legal status should be re-verified and time-stamped the day before this release goes live, as the First Circuit appeal remains pending.

SOURCE: Husys

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