FY2026 so far: fewer H-1B filings, and the weighted lottery by employer

Filings are down 7%

The Department of Labor certified 417,721 H-1B labor condition applications in Oct 2025 to Jun 2026, against 449,242 in Oct 2024 to Jun 2025 (−7%). An LCA is the wage filing an employer must have before it petitions for an H-1B worker. It is not a petition or an approval, and one LCA can cover several positions, so this is a measure of employer intent rather than visas issued.

The comparison has one distortion. The federal government shut down on October 1, 2025. From October 2 the Department certified almost no LCAs until it resumed labor certification processing on October 31, during the shutdown; volumes were back to normal from November 3: 1,384 were decided in October 2025, against 37,358 in October 2024. Most of those cases were decided in November and December instead, so they still fall inside the period. Counted by the date the employer filed rather than the decision date, the change is −12% (391,961 vs. 447,571); that figure misses some June filings decided after June 30, so the true fall lies between the two.

The fall is concentrated. Among employers with at least 1,000 certified LCAs in Oct 2024 to Jun 2025, the biggest drops were:

Some large filers grew over the same months:

The weighted lottery splits employers apart

From the March 2026 registration on, each registered person is entered once at wage Level I and up to four times at Level IV. Extensions, transfers and amendments do not go through it, so this uses the 149,984 new-employment LCAs, the filings behind most cap petitions, from Jul 2025 to Jun 2026 (out of 528,050 certified). Placing each offered salary on the 2026-27 OFLC wage table for its job and area gives each employer a profile. Across all employers, 16% of these LCAs reach Level IV and 40% get a single entry. Weighted by the number of workers each LCA covers, the Level IV share is 12%: multi-worker LCAs are mostly at lower levels.

The gap follows business models. Meta, which pays well above the local wage for most of the roles it files, has 37% of its new-employment LCAs at Level IV. Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, IT services firms whose offers sit close to the prevailing-wage floor, have 83% and 73% with a single entry (435 and 213 new-employment LCAs). These shares use the 2026-27 table, which applies to the March 2027 registration. On the lower 2025-26 table used for the March 2026 registration, the same salaries reach Level IV 20% of the time across all employers (vs. 16%), Meta 37%, and Infosys gets a single entry 14% of the time.

The Infosys swing shows how employers that pay at the prevailing-wage floor are exposed to the yearly table update. Its most common new-employment filing, Computer Occupations, All Other (SOC 15-1299) in the Dallas area, offers $92,581: exactly the 2025-26 Level II wage. The 2026-27 Level II wage for the same job and area is $97,011, so the same offer now reaches only Level I.

Green card (PERM) filings at the largest filers

The PERM labor certification is usually the first step of an employer-sponsored green card. Employer filing volumes swing widely from year to year:

Certified PERM cases (including certified and later expired), by fiscal year of decision. PERM review takes about a year, so a pause in filing shows up as a near-empty year about a year later.

How these numbers were made

• Cases were de-duplicated by case number across quarterly files; the latest decision counts.
• Employers are grouped by federal employer ID, so spelling variants of one company are counted together. That ID is used only for grouping and is not shown on this site.
• Salaries are the lower end of the offered range, converted to an annual figure. Salaries under $10,000 or over $1,000,000 a year are left out of medians.
• See the methodology for the full rules.