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How to Find H-1B Sponsors for Your Job and State
August 1, 2026
A practical guide to building a shortlist of realistic H-1B sponsors for your role and location — how to read DOL disclosure data, and the tool that does it in two clicks.
You can look up exactly which employers filed H-1B paperwork for your occupation in your state — free, from public US Department of Labor data. The Sponsor Finder does it in two clicks: pick a role, pick a state, and get a ranked list of employers with filing volume, certification rate, median offered wage and a sponsor-health signal. It covers 98 occupations across 1,034 occupation-and-state combinations.
This guide explains the method — how to read DOL data without fooling yourself — then shows the shortcut.
Why the raw DOL data is painful to use
Every H-1B petition starts with a Labor Condition Application: the employer tells DOL what the job is, where, and what it pays. DOL publishes every filing quarterly, so in principle you can download the spreadsheets and answer "who sponsors my role here?" yourself. Three things get in the way.
One company is many names. Employers type their own name into the form, so one business appears under a dozen spellings. In California, "Google LLC" and "GOOGLE INC." sit as separate filers with 15,498 and 14,580 Software Developer filings. Thousands of employers have this problem.
Job titles are free text. "Software Engineer", "SDE II" and "Programmer Analyst" can all be the same work. The stable key is the SOC occupation code, so any search built on titles misses most of the market.
Volume is not the same as your odds. The biggest filer in a state is often a staffing firm filing thousands of applications at entry wage levels — a real sponsor, but a different proposition from a product company filing a few hundred senior roles.
The Sponsor Finder does all three up front: resolving name variants to one canonical company, grouping by occupation code, and publishing outcome rates alongside volume.
How to use the Sponsor Finder
Two decisions, then optional narrowing.
- Pick your occupation. Start typing your role — it matches the DOL occupation list, so "software developer" or "data scientist" resolves to a code.
- Pick a state, or leave it off for a nationwide view. State matters more than people expect: California's sponsor mix looks nothing like Texas's.
That gives you a page like H-1B sponsors for Software Developers nationally, or the California version. From there you can narrow it:
- Minimum certification rate — Any, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90% or 95%.
- Minimum filings — Any, 25+, 50+, 100+, 500+, to strip out one-off filers.
- Only sponsors still filing (FY2024 or later) — the most valuable filter if you are job-hunting now. A company that stopped sponsoring in 2019 is not a lead.
- Sort by employer, filings, certified %, median wage or sponsor health.
Everything is already on the page, so filtering and sorting are instant. The URL updates as you filter, so the view you build is a link you can send.
How to read the results
Four columns do the work, and each is easy to over-read.
Filings — activity, not headcount
A filing is one Labor Condition Application, not one hired worker. One role can generate several over its life — an extension, an amendment, a worksite change — and a certified LCA does not mean anyone was hired. Read it as how actively this employer uses the H-1B process for this role here.
Certification rate — a DOL outcome, not a visa
The certification rate is the share of an employer's filings DOL certified. It is a paperwork outcome: DOL checks wage and notice obligations, it does not decide who gets a visa. The petition is decided separately by USCIS and is not in this dataset. And withdrawn is not denied — a withdrawn LCA usually means the role was filled or dropped, so it is not counted against a sponsor.
Median wage — the offered wage, not your take-home
The median wage the employer offered, benchmarked against the prevailing wage for that role and area. Gross annual pay before tax, committed to on a form — not a salary quote, not total comp, not what lands in your account. The wage-level mix beside it (Level I–IV) shows whether an employer files mostly entry-level or mostly senior roles, often more useful than the median.
Sponsor health — a summary, not an endorsement
The badge is a 0–100 score built only from DOL disclosure outcomes: certification rate (55%, weighted toward the trailing five fiscal years), denial rate (25%), and recent filing volume (20%, saturating so sheer size cannot buy a good score). Withdrawals are not penalised. Full weighting in the sponsor-health methodology.
It is not a prediction that your petition will be approved, and not a rating of the employer as a workplace.
"Limited data" appears instead of a score when a sponsor has fewer than 25 filings for that role and state, or none in the last five fiscal years. A small sample cannot tell a poor sponsor from an unlucky one, and the absence of a score is not a negative signal.
Worked example: Software Developers in California
Nationally, 6,622 employers filed 1,300,690 Software Developer LCAs between FY2010 and FY2026. In California alone: 1,388 employers, 273,136 filings.
The California list, ranked by volume:
| Employer | Filings | Certified | Median wage | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google LLC | 15,498 | 90.9% | $179,000 | 93 Strong |
| GOOGLE INC. | 14,580 | 68.7% | $127,000 | Limited data |
| Apple Inc. | 8,839 | 92.3% | $169,262 | 95 Strong |
| Meta Platforms, Inc | 5,809 | 98.5% | $209,720 | 99 Strong |
| Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. | 4,739 | 89.4% | $109,886 | 93 Strong |
Two things stand out.
The second row is a legacy entity. "GOOGLE INC." last filed in FY2019. Its 68.7% rate and $127,000 median describe filings under a name the company no longer uses — which is why it shows "Limited data" rather than a score, and why the still filing filter matters. Turn it on and the row disappears.
Filters change the shortlist more than sorting does. Set minimum filings to 500+ and certification to 90%, and a volume ranking becomes a realistic target list. The national view shows why role alone isn't enough — Microsoft at 36,646 filings and a $139,690 median sits alongside Tata Consultancy Services at 22,043 filings and a $65,790 median. Same occupation, very different jobs.
What the Sponsor Finder can't tell you
Being straight about the limits is the point.
- An LCA is not a visa, and a certified LCA is not an approved worker. Certification is DOL clearing wage and notice obligations. USCIS decides the petition separately, and the lottery decides who gets to file at all.
- A high certification rate is not a guarantee — it is history, not a forecast for your case. Wages are offered wages before tax, not take-home.
- Recent fiscal years are partial. Data lands quarterly, so the newest year is incomplete and will grow.
- Small combinations are not published at all. A role-and-state pairing appears only with at least 25 filings across at least 3 distinct employers. Below that it is omitted rather than blanked — blanking would still reveal the combination exists and roughly how big it is.
- It is historical, not a job board. A company that sponsored heavily in 2022 may have a freeze today.
Where to start
Open the Sponsor Finder, search your role, add your state. Turn on still filing, set a minimum filing count, and you have a shortlist worth researching properly.
From there, the Software Developers salary guide shows what the role pays by state and wage level, and the top H-1B sponsors ranking shows who files most overall.
H1B Report is an independent project built on public DOL disclosure data, not affiliated with the Department of Labor or USCIS. Nothing here is legal advice — for your own case, talk to an immigration attorney.
Frequently asked questions
Does a specific company sponsor H-1B for my role?
Search your occupation and add your state. If the company filed at least 25 LCAs for that role there, it appears in the ranked list with its filing count and certification rate. If it does not, it either filed below that threshold, filed under a different occupation code, or filed in another state.
What does the sponsor-health score mean?
A 0–100 summary of an employer's DOL outcomes for that role and state: certification rate (55%, weighted toward the last five fiscal years), denial rate (25%) and recent filing volume (20%, saturating). Withdrawals are not counted against a sponsor. It describes paperwork outcomes only — not USCIS approval odds, pay, or what the job is like.
Is a high certification rate a guarantee my petition will be approved?
No. Certification is a DOL decision about the LCA. The petition goes to USCIS afterwards and is decided on separate criteria, and cap-subject petitions must clear the lottery first. A strong certification history says an employer's filings are usually in order; it says nothing about your case.
Why do some big employers show "Limited data"?
The score is withheld when evidence is thin: fewer than 25 filings for that role and state, or none in the last five fiscal years. Large companies often show it on a legacy legal entity they have stopped filing under. The absence of a score is not a negative signal.
Does the Sponsor Finder cost anything or need an account?
No. Every page is free and public, with no login, and each role-and-state view has its own shareable URL.
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