Finding a job in the U.S. when you need visa sponsorship feels like a black box. You spend hours tailoring a resume, surviving three rounds of interviews, only to be told at the finish line that the company "doesn't sponsor at this time." It's exhausting. But there is a tool that basically ends the guessing game, and honestly, most people aren't using it correctly. It's called the H-1B Employer Data Hub.
Launched by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), this isn't just a boring government spreadsheet. It is a massive, transparent look into the soul of American corporate hiring. If a company says they sponsor, but the hub shows a 40% denial rate, you probably want to know that before you sign an offer letter.
The H-1B Employer Data Hub was born out of a 2017 executive order—"Buy American and Hire American"—which sounds political, sure, but the result was actually great for transparency. It forces the government to publish data on every single employer that has petitioned for an H-1B worker since fiscal year 2009. You can see the name of the company, how many petitions they filed, how many were approved, and how many were denied.
Why the H-1B Employer Data Hub is Your Secret Weapon
Most job seekers head to LinkedIn or Indeed and filter by "sponsorship provided." That's a mistake. Companies lie, or recruiters are misinformed. The data hub doesn't lie. When you search for a specific fiscal year, you're seeing the cold, hard numbers.
Let's say you're looking at a mid-sized tech firm in Austin. They tell you they have a "robust" immigration program. You pull them up in the hub. If you see they only had two approvals last year but twelve "Requests for Evidence" (RFEs) that led to denials, that’s a massive red flag. It suggests their legal team might be messy or they’re trying to categorize jobs in ways the government doesn't like.
Wait, it gets deeper.
The hub lets you track the "Initial Approval" versus "Continuing Approval" rates. This is huge. An initial approval is for a brand-new H-1B. A continuing approval is usually an extension or a transfer. If a company has a high success rate for extensions but a low rate for new hires, they might be "safe" for people already in the country but a "no-go" if you're applying from abroad.
Parsing the Numbers Without Losing Your Mind
When you first land on the USCIS website, the interface is... well, it's a government website. It’s clunky. You’ll see columns for Fiscal Year, Employer Name, City, State, and Zip Code. Then comes the technical stuff: Initial Approval, Initial Denial, Continuing Approval, and Continuing Denial.
The "NAICS" code is also there. That stands for the North American Industry Classification System. It’s a 6-digit number. Don’t ignore this. If you see a company mostly hiring under code 541511 (Custom Computer Programming Services), but you’re an Architect (typically 541310), you can see how often they stray outside their "usual" hiring lane.
The data is updated quarterly. This means you aren't looking at "ancient history" from 2012. You're looking at what happened three months ago. In a shifting economy where H-1B caps are hit within days and the lottery is a literal gamble, this recency is everything.
Understanding the "Denial" Metric
People freak out when they see a denial.
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"Oh no, Amazon had 500 denials!"
Relax. You have to look at the ratio. If a company like Amazon or Infosys files 30,000 petitions and gets 500 denials, their approval rate is still incredibly high. What you should actually worry about are the smaller shops where the denial rate is 20% or 30%.
Why do denials happen? Sometimes it's the "Specialty Occupation" rule. USCIS might decide the job doesn't actually require a Bachelor’s degree. Other times, it’s the prevailing wage. If the company tries to underpay you, the Department of Labor and USCIS will shut it down. The H-1B Employer Data Hub reflects these failures.
It’s also a mirror of policy changes. If you look at the data from 2018 to 2020, you’ll see a massive spike in denials across the board. That was a specific era of strict "Bridge to Nowhere" memos and aggressive RFE issuance. Looking at the 2024 and 2025 data shows a much more stabilized environment, though the "lottery" system remains the primary hurdle.
Spotting the "H-1B Dependent" Employers
There’s a specific category of employers that basically live and breathe H-1B visas. These are often IT consulting firms (sometimes called "outsourcing" firms, though that’s a loaded term).
The hub makes it very obvious who these players are.
- They have thousands of filings every year.
- Their zip codes often cluster around major tech hubs or "delivery centers."
- Their "Continuing Approval" numbers are massive because they move workers from project to project.
If you’re a fresh grad on OPT (Optional Practical Training), these companies are often the most likely to take a chance on you because they have the legal infrastructure to handle the paperwork. But, use the hub to check their "Initial Approval" counts. If they aren't getting new people through the lottery, your chances of staying in the U.S. with them are slim.
How to Use the Data Hub for Salary Negotiation
This is a pro tip that almost nobody talks about. While the H-1B Employer Data Hub itself focuses on approvals and denials, it links conceptually to the Foreign Labor Certification Data Center.
By seeing which employers are active in the hub, you can then cross-reference their Labor Condition Applications (LCAs). An LCA tells you exactly what they paid the last person they hired for your specific role in your specific city.
If the data hub shows that "Company X" had 50 approvals for Software Engineers in San Jose last year, you can bet your life that the salary data for those 50 people is public record. You shouldn't be walking into a negotiation blind. You should know that the median salary for an H-1B holder at that firm is $145,000. If they offer you $120,000, you have the data to push back.
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The Limitation of the Hub
Let's be real: the hub isn't perfect.
It doesn't tell you why a petition was denied. It won't say "the lawyer forgot to sign page 12" or "the candidate's degree didn't match the job description." It's just a tally.
Also, it doesn't distinguish between the "Masters Cap" and the "Regular Cap." If you have a Master's degree from a U.S. university, you have a better shot in the lottery, but the hub won't show you how many of an employer's approvals came from that specific pool.
Finally, the employer names can be messy. You might find "Google LLC" and "Google Cloud" listed separately, or with slight typos. You have to be a bit of a detective. Try searching by the first few letters of the name or use the zip code of their headquarters to find all the variations of their corporate filings.
Real-World Example: The "Consultancy" Trap
I recently spoke with a developer who was offered a role at a boutique consulting firm. They promised him they "never lose a visa case."
We pulled up the H-1B Employer Data Hub.
It turned out that in 2023, they had 15 petitions. 5 were approved, 4 were denied, and 6 were withdrawn.
"Withdrawn" is a sneaky stat. It usually means the employer realized they were going to lose the case after an RFE and pulled it to avoid a formal denial on their record. Or, the project they were hiring for fell through. Either way, that 33% approval rate told a very different story than the recruiter's "we never lose" pitch. He turned down the offer and found a firm with a 98% approval rate. That is the power of this data.
Navigating the CSV Downloads
If you're a data nerd, don't just use the web search. Download the CSV files.
USCIS provides annual files that you can throw into Excel or Google Sheets. This allows you to do things the web tool won't:
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- Sort by the highest denial rates in a specific state.
- Sum up the total filings for a parent company across all its subsidiaries.
- Filter for specific industries using NAICS codes to see where the "growth" is happening for H-1B talent.
For instance, if you're a nurse or a healthcare professional, filtering by the healthcare NAICS codes will show you which hospital systems are actually utilizing the H-1B program, which is often much more reliable than just searching job boards.
Moving Beyond the Lottery
The lottery is the biggest pain point in the H-1B process. Since there are only 85,000 visas available annually (including the Master's cap) and often 400,000+ applicants, the "Initial Approval" numbers in the hub will always look a bit depressing compared to the number of people who want to be there.
However, the hub also tracks "Cap-Exempt" employers. These are usually universities, non-profit research organizations, or government research entities.
If you find an employer in the hub that has a high number of "Initial Approvals" but you know they didn't participate in the March lottery, they are likely cap-exempt. This is a goldmine for researchers and academics who want to bypass the random luck of the draw.
Actionable Next Steps for Job Seekers
Don't wait until you have an offer to check the hub. Use it as part of your initial company research.
First, go to the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub.
Second, search for your top five "dream companies." Look at their data for the last three years. Is the number of approvals trending up or down? A downward trend might indicate the company is pivoting away from sponsorship to save on legal costs.
Third, look for "Continuing Approvals." If you are already on an H-1B and looking to "port" or transfer your visa, this is your most important metric. You want a company that knows how to handle the transfer process without hiccups.
Fourth, pay attention to the location. If a company has 1,000 approvals in New York but you're applying for a role in their tiny satellite office in Nebraska, the "prevailing wage" for Nebraska might be lower, which could affect your petition. The hub helps you see where their "visa-heavy" offices are located.
Finally, verify the "Employer Name" against the LCA data on sites like H1BGrader or MyVisaJobs. The hub is the official source, but those third-party sites often scrape the hub's data and make it easier to read. Always double-check back to the official USCIS site if something looks fishy.
The H-1B journey is stressful, no doubt. But walking into the process with data instead of hope is the best way to protect your career. Use the hub to vet your future boss. If they aren't willing to be transparent about their track record, the hub will do it for them.