The "Certified-Withdrawn" Mystery: Why Big Employers' Rates Look Low

If you sort H-1B sponsors by their "certification rate," some of the country's biggest, most sought-after employers look surprisingly weak. Microsoft, for example, shows just 35.21% certified in the disclosure data we track — a number that, taken at face value, suggests two-thirds of its filings went nowhere. That reading is almost always wrong.

This article explains the single most misunderstood field in the H-1B dataset: the certified-withdrawn status. You'll learn what it really measures, why it makes large employers' unconditional rates look low, and how to read a sponsor's numbers without drawing the wrong conclusion.

The four outcomes of an LCA

Every H-1B petition starts with a Labor Condition Application (LCA) filed with the Department of Labor. (If you're fuzzy on how the LCA differs from the visa itself, start with LCA vs H-1B Visa — this piece assumes you know the basics.) Once filed, an LCA lands in one of a few end states:

• Certified — DOL approved the application and it was not later pulled back.
• Certified-Withdrawn — DOL approved it, and the employer later withdrew it.
• Withdrawn — pulled back before a decision.
• Denied — DOL refused to certify it.

The trap is treating "certified" as the only good outcome and lumping everything else together as failure. In reality, certified-withdrawn is a success followed by a business decision, not a rejection. The application cleared DOL review. The employer simply chose not to keep it active.

Microsoft's numbers, decoded

Here is Microsoft's breakdown in the data:

Read the last two rows first. Zero percent withdrawn-before-decision. Zero percent denied. DOL did not refuse a single one. That is the opposite of a company struggling to get its applications approved.

So where did the other ~65% go? Into certified-withdrawn. Those applications were approved and then pulled back — overwhelmingly for ordinary operational reasons rather than any problem with the filing.

Why large employers withdraw so many approved applications

Big, high-volume sponsors withdraw certified LCAs for predictable, mundane reasons:

• Precautionary filings. An employer may file for multiple work locations, job titles, or wage levels to keep options open, then withdraw the ones it doesn't use once plans firm up.
• Duplicate coverage. The same worker or role can be covered by more than one LCA; the extras get withdrawn after one is put to use.
• Reorganizations and role changes. Teams move, projects get cancelled, an offer is declined, or a candidate isn't selected in the H-1B lottery — so a valid, certified application is retired.
• Amendments. A change in worksite or terms can require a fresh LCA, and the superseded one is withdrawn.

None of these is a black mark. A company planning at scale will always generate more certified-then-withdrawn applications than a small employer filing exactly what it needs. That's why the unconditional certification rate — certified and never withdrawn, as a share of everything — tends to fall as an employer's sophistication and volume rise.

The contrast that makes the point

Compare three sponsors in the same dataset:

• Amazon Development Center: 99.3% certified. Files close to what it uses; very little precautionary withdrawal.
• Cognizant: 53.58% certified, 0.00% denied. A large services firm with heavy certified-withdrawn volume — but again, nothing denied.
• Microsoft: 35.21% certified, 0.00% withdrawn, 0.00% denied.

Line these up and the "certification rate" looks like it's ranking employers from worst to best. It isn't. Amazon Development Center, Cognizant, and Microsoft all clear DOL review at essentially a 100% rate. What differs is how much precautionary filing each does — a reflection of planning style and scale, not approval quality.

That's the mistake a lot of "cleanest sponsor" lists bake in: they treat withdrawal as failure and end up penalizing the employers that plan furthest ahead. If you want the volume picture without that distortion, see Who Sponsors the Most H-1Bs, which ranks sponsors by filing count rather than by a rate that conflates two very different things.

How to read a sponsor's status mix

When you look at any employer's outcome breakdown, ask these questions in order:

1. What's the denied rate? This is the real signal of DOL trouble. In the examples above it's 0.00% across the board. A denial rate that's more than a rounding error is what deserves a second look.
2. What's the withdrawn-before-decision rate? Also near zero for large sponsors. High numbers here can indicate applications abandoned during review, which is worth noting — but still isn't a denial.
3. Only then, the certified-withdrawn share. Treat this as a measure of planning behavior, not quality. A big share is normal for high-volume filers.
4. What's the filing period? Remember that FY2026 is partial — only about two quarters are reported so far — so any single recent year's mix can look lopsided until the full year lands.

Put simply: certified-withdrawn ≠ denied, and a low unconditional certification rate almost never means rejections.

Why this matters if you're weighing an offer

If you're a candidate evaluating a potential sponsor, don't let a scary-looking certification percentage spook you. A firm at 35% certified with zero denials is not a firm that fails to get people approved. What you actually care about is different, and it lives in other fields:

• The wage level and offered wage on the LCA for your specific role and location. (Keep in mind the offered wage is a gross floor, not take-home pay.)
• Whether the employer files consistently for your occupation and metro — you can check that on any occupation or state page.
• The employer's denial and withdrawn-before-decision rates, which are the true reliability signals.

A useful comparison here is the outsourcing-versus-product-company split. High-volume services firms and big product companies both show large certified-withdrawn shares, but for different underlying reasons — the pattern is explored in Outsourcing Giants vs Big Tech.

The takeaway

The certified-withdrawn field is where naive sponsor rankings go to die. It looks like failure and reads like failure, but it's usually a certified application that an employer chose to retire — because it filed defensively, filed duplicates, or saw its plans change.

Before you judge a sponsor by its certification rate, check the two numbers that actually indicate a problem: denied and withdrawn-before-decision. When both sit near zero — as they do for Microsoft, Cognizant, and Amazon Development Center — the "low" certification rate isn't telling you what it looks like it's telling you.

h1b.report is an independent project and is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Labor or USCIS. LCA certification is a DOL step and is separate from USCIS approval of the H-1B petition itself.