2023 H-1B Employer Trends: Who Received Initial Approvals, and What the Data Shows

Key findings:

• USCIS approved 108,180 initial H-1B petitions across 27,989 employers in 2023, at a 96.2% initial-approval rate.

• The 2022 leaders (Amazon, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, Google) are absent from the top of the 2023 single-entity ranking. Microsoft, IBM, Wipro, Meta, and Apple lead instead, a shift driven by both entity fragmentation and a real decline in filings at the large IT services firms and Amazon.

• Six industries account for 92% of initial approvals. Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services leads by a wide margin, while Educational Services and Finance and Insurance are driven more by breadth across many small filers than by a few dominant employers.

• The typical 2023 sponsor filed once. The median and mode are both 1 approval, versus a mean of 3.9, which has direct implications for how petitioners and counsel should think about documentation and entity identification.

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The H-1B visa

The H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa classification that allows a U.S. employer to sponsor a foreign worker in a specialty occupation, defined under INA 214(i)(1), 8 U.S.C. 1184(i)(1), as an occupation requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent in that specific specialty.[1] The classification also covers a small number of other categories, including Department of Defense cooperative research and development project workers and fashion models of distinguished merit and ability. A fuller discussion of the H-1B, including its history, cap structure, and general qualification requirements, is available on ProfVal's H-1B Visa Overview page.[2]

Each fiscal year, USCIS reports two kinds of approvals for every H-1B petitioning employer: initial approvals, which cover a worker's first authorization to work for that specific petitioner, and continuing approvals, which extend or amend an existing period of employment. This post uses initial approvals only, since that figure best reflects new H-1B hiring activity in a given year.

2023 H-1B Employer Approvals in context

USCIS's 2023 Employer Data Hub file reports 108,180 initial H-1B approvals, issued to 27,989 distinct employer records, alongside 4,309 initial denials (a 96.2% initial approval rate) and 205,432 continuing approvals.[3] Consistent with the H-1B Employer Data Hub's own convention, each employer record in this analysis reflects a distinct petitioner name, tax ID, and location combination, so a company that files under more than one legal entity, for example a large corporation with several U.S. subsidiaries, appears more than once.

That convention matters for reading 2023 correctly. The employers that led initial approvals in 2022, Amazon, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, and Google, are not at the top of the 2023 single-entity ranking.[4] Two things happened at once. First, Amazon, Cognizant, and Tata Consultancy Services each split their 2023 filings across multiple subsidiary tax IDs rather than one dominant filer. Second, initial approval volume at the large India-based IT services firms and at Amazon fell in absolute terms as well, which lines up with the hiring slowdowns those firms reported through 2023.

Microsoft, IBM, Wipro, Meta, and Apple, in contrast, filed most of their 2023 petitions under a single primary entity, which is part of why a mainstream U.S. technology company leads the single-entity list for the first time in recent memory rather than an IT outsourcing firm.

The Meaning of "Employer of Record" Shifted in 2023 - Amazon as an Example

Amazon's initial approvals were not filed by one legal entity but by at least 13 separate ones, each a genuine, separately registered petitioner rather than an accounting convenience. Combined, Amazon-affiliated entities received 1,300 initial approvals in 2023, more than any single company on the list, but that total is spread across the following filers:

The practical point for a petitioner: an offer from "Amazon" could mean any one of these entities is the actual petitioner on the I-129, and each has its own filing history with USCIS. Confirming the specific entity matters more than the Amazon brand name when assessing what USCIS has seen from that petitioner before.

Industry findings across 2023 H-1B employers

Six industries, grouped by two-digit NAICS code, accounted for 92% of 2023 initial approvals:

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (NAICS 54): legal, accounting, engineering, IT and management consulting, and computer systems design firms. The largest category by both volume and breadth, 13,201 distinct employers.

Leading employers: IBM Corporation (944), Wipro Limited (862), Tech Mahindra Americas Inc (583), Ernst Young US LLP (559), HCL America Inc (509).

Educational Services (NAICS 61): universities, school districts, and affiliated research and teaching institutions, most filing as cap-exempt petitioners.[1] Driven by breadth, 2,379 distinct employers, rather than by a few dominant filers.

Leading employers: The Leland Stanford Jr University (263), University of Michigan (262), Mayo Clinic (232), Milwaukee Board of School Directors (162), University of Pennsylvania (158).

Manufacturing (NAICS 31-33): production of physical goods, including electronics, semiconductors, automotive, and pharmaceuticals. Concentrated among a smaller number of large technology and hardware manufacturers than Professional Services.

Leading employers: Apple Inc (692), Intel Corporation (495), Tesla Inc (327), Nvidia Corporation (291), Qualcomm Technologies Inc (287).

Health Care and Social Assistance (NAICS 62): hospitals, medical schools, and other clinical and social assistance providers. Approvals are spread across a large number of teaching hospitals and research medical centers.

Leading employers: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (151), Cleveland Clinic (143), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (135), St Jude Children's Research Hospital (126), General Hosp Corp d/b/a Mass General Hospital (123).

Information (NAICS 51): software publishing, data processing and hosting, telecommunications, and media and streaming services. The category most concentrated among a handful of large technology employers.

Leading employers: Microsoft Corporation (977), Meta Platforms Inc (724), Amazon Development Center US Inc (521), Amazon Web Services Inc (471), Oracle America Inc (321).

Finance and Insurance (NAICS 52): banks, investment managers, insurance carriers, and payment companies. Spread across a wide base of financial institutions rather than led by one or two dominant filers.

Leading employers: Citibank NA (198), Goldman Sachs Co LLC (198), PayPal Inc (114), Fidelity Investments (96), BlackRock Financial Management Inc (92).

The median, mean, and mode tell a different story than the top of the list for 2023 H-1B employers

Across the 27,989 employer records that received at least one 2023 initial approval:

The mean of 3.9 approvals per employer is pulled well above what a typical filer looked like, because a small number of large employers received hundreds of approvals each. The median and mode, both 1, describe the typical sponsor far better: half of all employers with an approval received exactly one, and 17,314 employers, 61.9% of all employers with an approval, received exactly one.

This is the most important pattern in the 2023 data for petitioners and counsel to keep in mind. The typical H-1B sponsor in 2023 was not a large company filing hundreds of petitions. It was an employer filing for a single worker. The 93 employer entries with 101 or more initial approvals represent 0.3% of all sponsoring employers but accounted for 19.3% of all initial approvals, meaning the mean is a poor description of a typical filer and the median and mode are the more accurate ones.[3]

What this means for petitioners and counsel

• For the large majority of H-1B sponsors, who filed once in 2023, USCIS has no prior filing history with that employer to draw on. Documentation establishing the position as a specialty occupation, including an Expert Opinion Letter where warranted, carries more weight when there is no track record of prior approvals to point to.

• For petitioners at a large, multi-entity employer, confirming which specific legal entity and tax ID is the actual petitioner matters, as the Amazon breakdown above illustrates. A worker's understanding of "who sponsors me" and USCIS's understanding of the petitioning entity are not always the same company informally, and prior approval history is tied to the entity, not the brand.

• Industry alone does not predict approval volume. Educational Services and Finance and Insurance both show high approval totals built from many small filers rather than a few dominant ones, which is different from Information and Manufacturing, where a handful of large employers account for a bigger share of the category total.

  
  

Top 50 H-1B employers in 2023 by initial approvals

Ranked by initial approvals for a single employer, tax ID, and location entry, as reported by USCIS. Employers that file under more than one entity, such as Amazon, HCL, or Deloitte, may appear more than once or may rank lower individually than their combined total would suggest.

How ProfVal can help

This kind of employer-level detail is exactly what an H-1B petition needs to get right, and it is the kind of documentation ProfVal helps attorneys and petitioners assemble:

• H-1B Expert Opinion Letters: an in-depth, signed opinion from an expert in the beneficiary's field addressing specialty occupation and beneficiary qualification questions. Learn more on ProfVal's H-1B Expert Opinion Letter page.

• Academic Transcript Evaluations: a credential evaluation establishing the U.S. equivalency of a beneficiary's foreign degree and coursework. Learn more on ProfVal's Academic Transcript Evaluation page.

ProfVal has provided services to support immigration law firms since 2019, drawing on a network of 200+ affiliated experts across academic disciplines, and is a sponsor of AILA (the American Immigration Lawyers Association). ProfVal is also committed to equality of opportunity in the immigration process.[5] Publishing free, data-driven analyses like this one, without a paywall, is part of how ProfVal supports that commitment.

Sources

• [1] Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 214(i)(1), 8 U.S.C. 1184(i)(1); Section 214(g)(5)(A), 8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(5)(A).

• [2] ProfVal, H-1B Visa Overview, profval.com.

• [3] USCIS, H-1B Employer Data Hub, fiscal year 2023 (h1b_datahubexport-2023.csv), downloaded from uscis.gov.

• [4] Prior-year 2022 figures as reported in ProfVal's earlier employer analysis at h1bexpert.com, drawn from the same USCIS Employer Data Hub series.

• [5] ProfVal, Our Story, profval.com.

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