How are EB-5 jobs counted for a staffing company project?

The employees must be working directly for the new commercial enterprise (NCE), so as long as they are considered full-time positions with the staffing company, which will be the NCE, it should work. TEA is determined by where the NCE is principally doing business. This definition depends on a number of factors, one of which is where the employees will be physically located. You should contact an experienced EB-5 attorney to talk through the other factors to see if the location can be designated as a TEA.

As long as the employees are direct employees and paid by the company in which you invest and there are at least 10 full-time employees, that should satisfy the EB-5 job creation requirements. Normally, the determination of whether a project is located in TEA would be based upon the location of the job-creating entity.

As long the requisite 10 jobs are full-time jobs, created by the requisite minimum investment by the EB-5 investor and employed by the NCE, they would qualify. As far as TEA is concerned, that would be determined by the location of the NCE, not the client sites.

The USCIS will count full-time employment in terms of man-hours (eight per day, minimum 37.5 per week). Take off two weeks for vacation, meaning multiply that by 351, and you have a year of full-time employment. So, more than ten persons for a staffing agency may be required to satisfy the 10 jobs created requirement. As for the TEA, that will depend on where the jobs are being created.

This is complicated as it depends on where the employees will actually be working.

Generally, it is not where the headquarters are located but where most of the workers will be that qualifies a project as “rural.” However, the key aspect to understand, under current rules, is that if you are using a regional center, then it may be possible to count indirect and even induced jobs. So, you are not counting direct hires, but rather calculating job creation based on expenditure models such as RIMS 11. In the context of direct EB-5, the employees have to be employed by the job-creating entity directly which could be the staffing company. This is definitely a viable EB-5 framework but needs careful structuring to comply with current rules.