Jobs

Direct jobs

Also called direct employment, payroll jobs, direct job creation.

A direct job is a position held by an employee of the new commercial enterprise itself or, in a regional center case, of the job-creating entity, as distinct from an indirect job held at a supplier or other business outside them.

What it decides

USCIS defines a direct job as one that establishes an employer-employee relationship between the new commercial enterprise and the person it employs. For a standalone investor filing Form I-526 outside a regional center, direct jobs are the only kind that count: the new commercial enterprise, or its wholly owned subsidiaries, must itself be the employer, and 8 CFR 204.6(j)(4)(i) asks either for tax records, Form I-9 or similar documents for ten qualifying employees already hired, or for a comprehensive business plan showing that ten will be needed within the next two years, a period USCIS treats as starting six months after the I-526 is adjudicated rather than when it is filed. A regional center case is not looser, it is capped. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(I) an employee of either the new commercial enterprise or the job-creating entity may be treated as holding a directly created job, but no more than 90 percent of the ten jobs may be indirect, so at least 10 percent must be direct, and where the jobs come from construction activity lasting less than two years the indirect share is capped at 75 percent instead. Direct jobs in a regional center case may themselves be estimated using economically and statistically valid methodologies under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(v), so what makes a job direct is who employs the worker, not whether payroll records or an economic model prove it.

Governed by 8 CFR 204.6(e) (definitions of employee, full-time employment and qualifying employee) and 8 CFR 204.6(j)(4)(i); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(I), (E)(iv)(II) and (E)(v); USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 2, Section D, Creation of Jobs, subsections 4 and 5 (6 USCIS-PM G.2(D)(4) and G.2(D)(5)), current as of 5 August 2026 (https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-g-chapter-2); regulation text at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-204/subpart-A/section-204.6

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into direct jobs rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

Indirect jobsIndirect jobs are positions created elsewhere in the economy by a project's spending, estimated with an economic model rather than counted from a payroll, and available only to regional center investors. They may fill at most nine of the ten jobs each investor must create.
Induced jobsInduced jobs are jobs a model attributes to the project's direct and indirect employees spending their earnings on consumer goods and services, which USCIS treats for EB-5 purposes as a sub-set of indirect jobs.
Qualifying employeeA qualifying employee is a US citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or another immigrant lawfully authorized to be employed in the United States, and only their full-time positions count toward an investor's ten. The statute adds United States nationals to that list.
90 percent cap on indirect jobsThe 90 percent cap limits a regional center investor to meeting no more than nine of the ten required jobs with indirectly created ones, so at least one of the ten must be a direct job; a tighter 75 percent limit applies where the estimated jobs come from construction activity lasting less than two years.

Checked against primary sources on 6 August 2026. Back to the glossary