IN THIS GUIDE · Qualifying job creation versus ordinary employment
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Identify the counting method
Start by confirming whether the petition uses a standalone enterprise or a regional-centre arrangement. Direct employment and permissible indirect-job evidence require different support. A project’s statement that it supports many local jobs cannot be imported into either case without analysis. Ask which legal method applies and which evidence connects the claimed jobs to the investor’s qualifying investment.
Review workers and positions
For direct jobs, the relevant worker qualifications and full-time positions matter, not simply the number of people paid during a year. Investor and specified family employment is excluded. Do not assume independent contractors, temporary roles or multiple part-time workers can be counted as equivalent full-time positions. Have counsel review the actual hours, employment relationships and applicable job-sharing rules.
Check forecast inputs
A hiring plan or economic model depends on facts that must be credible and later documented. Identify the premises, financing, expenditures and operating assumptions supporting the forecast. Distinguish projected jobs from those already created. A model’s output should be traceable to its inputs, and an impressive surplus should not obscure uncertainty about whether those inputs will actually occur.
Preserve proof as jobs develop
Establish how payroll, employment eligibility, expenditure or other methodology-specific records will be retained. Assign responsibility to the enterprise or project party that controls them. Review significant staffing or budget changes while records are current. Waiting until the I-829 stage can leave the investor unable to obtain documents that once existed or to explain departures from the original evidence.
Fix the counting method before counting anything
The order of enquiry decides whether the job evidence will hold. Confirm the structure first, whether a standalone new commercial enterprise or a regional-centre arrangement, because that single fact determines which jobs may be counted and what evidence will substantiate them. Identify the applicable counting method second, and write it down. Build the hiring or economic model third, against that method rather than against a general expectation. Only then produce a number. Producing the number first and locating a method to support it afterwards is the sequence that fails, because the model then carries assumptions chosen to reach a total rather than to describe the business. The underlying requirements remain fixed throughout: capital must be at risk in a new commercial enterprise, the investment must generally create ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers, the investor must engage in the enterprise, and status begins as conditional permanent residence requiring a later petition to remove conditions. Permanent residence is not citizenship, and no job total changes that.
Hypothetical example: taking a projected workforce apart
Hypothetical example: a cold-storage and repacking facility projects a workforce across three years and an investor is asked to rely on the total. Take the figures apart in order. Ask first which positions are full-time and sustained as against seasonal peaks, since a repacking operation headcount can vary widely across a year and a peak figure is not the same as a continuing one. Ask second which workers are qualifying, confirming that the investor and specified family members are excluded from the count. Ask third whether any part-time roles are being aggregated, and on what basis. Ask fourth what the forecast depends on, meaning the premises, the financing and the expenditure schedule, and whether those inputs are committed or merely planned. Each question narrows the next, and by the fourth the remaining uncertainty is usually visible. Record the answers with dates, because the same questions arise again when conditions are removed and the file should show what was known at the time.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.