J-1 Student Employment

Student Employment

J-1 "Student Employment" is limited to 20 hours per week except during school breaks and your annual vacation. Your J-1 Responsible Officer can approve "Student Employment" for up to one year at a time.

Type 1: Employment required by a scholarship, fellowship, or assistantship. This kind of work usually occurs on campus, with the school as the employer. In certain circumstances, however, the work can be done elsewhere, for a different employer. You might work in a government or private research laboratory, for example, if your major professor had a joint appointment there, and would be supervising you in work that would count toward your degree.

Type 2: On-campus jobs unrelated to study. The regulations allow for jobs on campus that are unrelated to study, and they stipulate only that the work be done "on the premises" of the school. That means that the school does not have to be the employer, and that you could work for a commercial company, such as a food service, in its operations on your campus.

Type 3: Off-campus jobs. "Necessary because of serious, urgent, and unforeseen economic circumstances" that have arisen since your arrival in the United States as an Exchange Visitor, or since your change, inside the country, to J-1 status.

Please be sure to see your Responsible Officer if you want to begin employment in any of these categories. You must get authorization from your Responsible Officer before you begin any type of employment.