American work sponsorship is far more concentrated than the size of the economy suggests. A small number of industries, and within them a relatively small number of employers, account for most of the visas issued every year.
Knowing where that concentration sits turns an impossible search into a targeted one. Here is the map, and the data source that lets you verify any of it yourself.
The data is public, which changes everything
Employers filing for foreign workers must submit Labor Condition Applications, and for permanent cases, PERM applications. The Department of Labor publishes that data.
It shows which companies filed, for which job titles, at which salaries, in which cities, and in what volume. Several free tools index it and make it searchable.
Use it before you apply anywhere. An employer that has filed dozens of petitions has immigration counsel on retainer, a budget line, and internal familiarity with the process. An employer with no filing history will most likely decline, regardless of how well an interview goes.
This single habit separates people who get sponsored from people who send five hundred applications into a void.
Technology dominates by a wide margin
Amazon is the largest sponsor in the country by volume, with roughly ten thousand approvals. Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft, Meta and Apple follow.
Below that tier sit hundreds of employers filing in meaningful volume: Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, Oracle, Intel, Qualcomm, the large consulting and IT services firms, and a long tail of mid-size product companies.
The roles that dominate approvals are software engineering, data science, machine learning, cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity.
One structural point worth knowing. These roles typically command Level III and Level IV prevailing wages, and under current selection weighting higher wage levels have improved lottery odds. The details here have been litigated and are subject to change, so treat it as context rather than a strategy.
Finance and professional services are the most reliable non-tech route
JPMorgan Chase recorded around 2,440 approvals in 2025, making it the eighth largest sponsor overall and the largest in financial services. Its approval rate has run near 99.88 percent, which tells you the filings are well prepared and the roles genuinely qualify.
Deloitte, EY, Goldman Sachs and the other large consulting and accounting firms file consistently, often in volume, across technology, advisory, audit and quantitative roles.
The advantage of this sector is predictability. These are organisations with established processes, and sponsorship is a routine cost rather than an exception requiring approval.
Healthcare splits into two very different halves
This distinction matters more than anything else in this article for anyone in a clinical or research field.
Cap-subject healthcare employers file like any private company. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, Abbott, UnitedHealth Group and Mayo Clinic all sponsor in meaningful numbers, mostly in research, data, regulatory and specialist clinical roles.
Cap-exempt healthcare is the part almost nobody exploits. Academic medical centres and university-affiliated teaching hospitals frequently qualify as cap-exempt, meaning no lottery, no March deadline, and petitions filed in any month of the year.
For a clinician, researcher or healthcare data specialist, a university-affiliated hospital removes the single biggest obstacle in the American system. Pay is often lower than the private sector. Against a lottery you will probably lose, it is usually the better trade.
Universities and research institutions
Worth stating separately because people persistently think this means professorships.
Universities employ research staff, laboratory technicians, data analysts, software engineers, clinicians, librarians, financial analysts and administrators. A university IT department hires developers, and those roles can be cap-exempt.
Nonprofit research organisations whose primary mission is research, and government research organisations, are also exempt.
If your field has any academic or research adjacency at all, this is the most underused route into the United States.
Engineering and manufacturing
Semiconductors, aerospace, automotive, energy and industrial manufacturing all sponsor, concentrated around specific regional clusters.
Semiconductor manufacturing in particular has seen substantial investment and associated hiring, with demand for process, electrical and materials engineers.
Volumes are lower than technology but competition is correspondingly lighter, and prevailing wages in these fields generally clear thresholds without difficulty.
Where it is genuinely hard
Being honest about the other side.
Small and medium businesses across most sectors rarely sponsor, because the cost and unfamiliarity fall disproportionately on them. Retail, hospitality, construction trades, logistics operations and most service businesses sponsor very little at the H-1B level, partly because many roles do not meet the specialty occupation requirement.
Marketing, human resources, general management and most administrative functions sponsor at much lower rates than technical roles, even inside companies that sponsor heavily.
If you are in one of these fields, the realistic routes are usually an intracompany transfer, an O-1 if your record supports it, or a US degree followed by OPT.
Geography matters as much as industry
Sponsorship clusters geographically and applying nationwide dilutes your effort.
The San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle for technology. New York for finance. Boston for biotechnology, healthcare and academia. Austin, Raleigh-Durham and Atlanta as growing technology centres. Chicago across finance, consulting and manufacturing. Houston for energy.
Filing data shows city-level detail, so you can see exactly where an employer files rather than guessing from a headquarters address.
The routes that avoid the lottery entirely
Before concentrating on H-1B, check whether something simpler applies.
L-1 if you already work for a company with a US office and have one continuous year with them abroad in the last three.
O-1 if you have a record of recognised achievement. No cap, file any month.
Cap-exempt H-1B through universities, affiliated nonprofits and research organisations.
Country-specific routes. TN for Canadians and Mexicans, E-3 for Australians, dedicated H-1B1 allocations for Singaporeans and Chileans that go undersubscribed most years.
People spend years in a lottery while holding a passport that offered a simpler path.
Mistakes that waste a year
- Applying without checking filing history. The data is free and searchable.
- Ignoring cap-exempt employers and entering a lottery unnecessarily.
- Applying nationwide rather than into the clusters where your industry actually files.
- Assuming any large company sponsors. Many large employers file almost nothing.
- Missing a country-specific route your nationality already provides.
Questions people actually ask
Which industry sponsors most? Technology by a wide margin, then finance and professional services, then healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
Do startups sponsor? Some do, particularly well-funded ones. Check their filing history rather than assuming.
Is healthcare a good route? Yes, and the cap-exempt half of it is the most underused route in the system.
Does salary affect my lottery odds? Wage level has featured in selection weighting, though the details have been litigated. Treat it as context.
Can I see what an employer pays? Yes. Filing data includes the offered wage by job title and location.
Where to start
Search the public filing data for your job title, filter by the cities you would live in, and build a list of employers who have actually sponsored someone doing your job.
Then add every university, teaching hospital and research institute in those cities. That combined list is a real job search. Everything else is hope.
How to read the filing data properly
The data rewards specific queries rather than broad ones.
Search by job title and you will find the volume. Search by job title plus city and you will find where an employer actually places people, which frequently differs from its headquarters. Search by employer and you can see whether sponsorship is routine or was a one-off several years ago.
Look at the wage figures alongside the volume. They tell you what the employer pays for your role in that location, which is the most reliable salary benchmark available anywhere and is worth having before any negotiation.
Look at the year. An employer that filed heavily in 2021 and almost nothing since has changed policy, and applying there on the strength of old data wastes effort.
And look at the job titles rather than the company name. A large employer may sponsor engineers in volume and no one in marketing, which decides whether it belongs on your list.
Related reading
- How to Find a US Employer Who Will Sponsor Your Work Visa
- H-1B Cap-Exempt Employers: The Route That Skips the Lottery
- The EB-3 Visa: The Green Card Route for Skilled, Unskilled and Professional Workers
Information only, not legal advice. Sponsorship patterns, selection procedures and cap-exemption rules change. Consult a licensed US immigration attorney about your own circumstances.