Every approved EB-5 investor puts at least $800,000 into a US business in a targeted employment area, or $1,050,000 outside one, and must show that the investment created at least 10 full time jobs before conditions come off the green card. Multiply that by the investors who actually finish the cycle and you have the program's measurable footprint. What does not exist is an audited national total. USCIS publishes petition and approval statistics rather than a verified job count, so the headline figures quoted in marketing decks rest on economic models rather than payroll records.
The arithmetic that holds up
Start with the per investor numbers, since those come from statute rather than estimate. $800,000 in a TEA. Ten jobs. Two years of conditional residence in which those jobs must appear and survive. A thousand investors completing that cycle represent $800 million of capital and 10,000 counted jobs, and every unit of it was tested by an officer at the I-829 stage.
Now the correction most summaries skip. EB-5 receives 7.1 percent of the worldwide employment based visa allocation, which is about 9,940 visas when the employment based total sits at its statutory floor of 140,000. Those visas cover spouses and children as well as principals. If an average family uses two and a half visas, fewer than 4,000 new investors enter annually, putting yearly capital formation nearer $3 billion than the $8 billion a careless reader might infer from the visa cap alone. Anyone quoting the larger number has probably confused visas with investors.
How a job becomes a number
Three categories appear in every economic impact report.
- Direct jobs. Actual employees on the payroll of the enterprise or the job creating entity. A W-2 exists for each one.
- Indirect jobs. Employment at suppliers and contractors, estimated with an input output model such as RIMS II or IMPLAN. No individual is ever named.
- Induced jobs. Employment supported when those workers spend wages in the local economy. Modeled again, one further step from the payroll.
Only regional center investors may claim the modeled categories. A direct investor counts payroll and nothing beyond it. RIA then put ceilings on the modeling: indirect jobs may satisfy no more than 90 percent of the requirement, and jobs from construction activity lasting under two years may account for no more than 75 percent.
Those ceilings answered a real abuse. Offerings written before 2022 sometimes drew nearly all their job creation from an eighteen month construction spend, leaving a finished building and very little permanent employment behind it. Our breakdown of how EB-5 economic impact reports are built and checked takes the methodology apart line by line.
Which numbers to distrust
Any total presented without a denominator. Suppose a sponsor claims 3,200 jobs from a $60 million project. Ask one question: how many of those are direct payroll positions, and how many came out of the multiplier? The answer changes what happens to your I-829 if construction stalls in month fourteen.
Cushion is the figure that protects you personally. Ten jobs per investor is the legal requirement, so a project modeling 15 or 18 jobs per investor can be wrong by a third and still clear. Our page on verifying job creation projections before you invest shows how to read that margin.
Where the capital lands
RIA rewired the geography of the program. Reserved visas now run 20 percent to rural projects, 10 percent to high unemployment areas and 2 percent to infrastructure projects sponsored by a governmental entity. Because those reserved lines move faster for backlogged countries, investor demand follows them, which pulls capital toward smaller towns that historically saw very little EB-5 money.
Whether that produces better outcomes for the towns is a separate question from whether it produces faster visas for you. Both matter. Our survey of what EB-5 capital actually builds across the country looks at the project side, and unemployment data for any specific area can be checked against the BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics program before you accept a sponsor's TEA claim.
The compliance layer nobody counts
Economic impact also shows up as a cost, and the industry pays it rather than the taxpayer. RIA created the EB-5 Integrity Fund. Each regional center pays an annual fee of $20,000, reduced to $10,000 where it had 20 or fewer investors in the previous fiscal year, plus $1,000 for each investor petition filed. Regional centers also submit an annual statement on Form I-956G. That money pays for audits and site visits.
Compliance spending is unglamorous. It is also the reason the program survived a political fight many predicted it would lose.
Why any of this matters to an $800,000 decision
Political durability is the practical answer. A program that visibly funds construction in congressional districts is harder to repeal than one reading as a straight sale of green cards, and the terms Congress wrote in 2022 reflect that judgment. Regional center authority runs to 30 September 2027. Regional center petitions filed on or before 30 September 2026 are protected under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S), headed protection from expired legislation, which appears in the official text of 8 U.S.C. 1153. USCIS keeps its own summary of eligibility and process on the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program page.
Prices move as well. The first inflation adjustment to the investment thresholds arrives on 1 January 2027, and the amounts adjust every five years after that. An $800,000 entry price will not stay $800,000 forever.
None of this changes your individual arithmetic. Your green card depends on 10 jobs attributable to your own capital, never on the program's aggregate performance. A strong national picture will not rescue a petition tied to one failing hotel. And demand from a small number of countries shapes your wait far more than economic output does, which is the subject of the EB-5 visa queue and how set-asides change it.