Blog
Which States Punch Above Their Weight on H-1B (Per-Capita)
August 28, 2026
California files the most H-1B labor condition applications by far, but once you normalize by the size of each state's workforce, the map reorders — and New Jersey, Washington, and even tiny Delaware move to the front.
Raw filing counts make the H-1B map look simple: California is enormous, everything else is a footnote. But volume mostly tracks how many workers a state already has. A more revealing question is intensity — how heavily a state leans on H-1B labor relative to its own workforce. Normalize by employment and the leaderboard reshuffles. This piece walks through which states punch above their weight on H-1B per capita, why small states can top the list, and how to read the numbers without overclaiming.
If you want the raw-volume view first, see the companion piece on where H-1B jobs actually are. This is the mirror image: same data, divided by workforce.
Volume vs. intensity: two different maps
The figures below count certified Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) — the wage-and-worksite filing an employer submits to the Department of Labor before petitioning for an H-1B worker — across all available years, expressed per 100,000 workers in each state (territories excluded).
- New Jersey — ~12,400 filings per 100,000 workers (about 534K filings total)
- Washington — ~11,000 per 100,000 (407K)
- Delaware — ~9,700 per 100,000 (only 47K filings)
- California — ~9,100 per 100,000 (1.68M)
- Massachusetts — ~9,000 per 100,000 (339K)
- New York — ~7,900 per 100,000 (779K)
Look at California and New Jersey side by side. California records roughly 1.68 million filings — orders of magnitude more than New Jersey's 534K. Yet per 100,000 workers, New Jersey is more H-1B-intensive. The crown for raw volume and the crown for intensity belong to different states.
The chart above shows the raw-volume ranking straight from the data — the map most people picture. Keep it in mind as the baseline the per-capita reframe pushes against.
Why New Jersey leads on intensity
New Jersey's position is not an accident of small size — it is a large, dense labor market. What drives its per-capita intensity is concentration: a heavy footprint of financial-services technology, pharmaceutical research, and IT-consulting operations clustered in the New York metro's western half. Many of the largest H-1B sponsors — global consulting and outsourcing firms alongside banks — run major delivery and back-office sites in the state. Those employers file in bulk, and New Jersey's workforce, while sizable, is smaller than California's or Texas's. High numerator, moderate denominator, top of the list.
Washington tells a cleaner version of the same story. Its filings are dominated by a small number of very large technology employers headquartered in the Seattle area. When a handful of firms hire software and data talent at scale in a single mid-sized state, per-capita intensity climbs fast even though the absolute count (407K) is well below California's.
Massachusetts and New York round out the pattern from different angles — Massachusetts on research, biotech, and universities; New York on finance and a broad services economy that is large enough to keep its per-capita figure a notch lower despite 779K filings.
The Delaware effect: small states over-index
Delaware is the classic over-indexer, and it is worth pausing on because it shows how per-capita math can mislead if you read it carelessly. With only about 47,000 filings total, Delaware still lands near the top at ~9,700 per 100,000 workers — ahead of California.
That happens because of how corporations are structured, not because Delaware's streets are lined with H-1B jobs. Delaware is the legal home of a huge share of U.S. companies, and financial and card-services operations maintain real, filing-heavy sites there. Divide a chunky filing count by a tiny state workforce and the ratio spikes. The signal is genuine — those filings exist — but it reflects corporate geography and a small denominator more than a sprawling local tech scene.
The lesson: per-capita intensity is the right lens for asking "how much does this economy lean on H-1B labor," but for a small state, a single large employer or a legal-domicile quirk can dominate the ratio. Always glance back at the absolute count before drawing conclusions.
What the numbers do — and do not — say
Because state comparisons get quoted loosely, a few guardrails matter:
- An LCA is not a visa. The counts here are certified labor condition applications, an early step in the process. They are not approved H-1B petitions, and one worker can be associated with more than one filing over time (extensions, amendments, transfers).
- A DOL certification is not a USCIS approval. The Department of Labor certifies the wage-and-worksite paperwork; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services separately decides the petition. A certified LCA does not mean a visa was granted.
- Withdrawn is not denied. Employers withdraw filings for ordinary business reasons — a role changes, a candidate declines. A withdrawal is not a rejection.
- The offered wage is not take-home pay. LCA wages are gross figures tied to a role and location, before taxes, benefits, and cost-of-living differences.
- The current fiscal year is partial. FY2026 reflects only about two quarters of reported data, so year-to-date state totals will look small until the year fills in.
These caveats are why per-capita ranking is best treated as a relative intensity signal — a way to compare states to each other — rather than a precise headcount of foreign workers living in any one place.
Intensity has been rising nearly everywhere
Part of what makes the per-capita map interesting is that it is not static. National filing volume has grown substantially over the years the disclosure data covers, and the most H-1B-intensive states have generally led that growth.
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 22,533 |
| 2011 | 23,613 |
| 2012 | 27,861 |
| 2013 | 29,795 |
| 2014 | 36,783 |
| 2015 | 47,664 |
| 2016 | 48,372 |
| 2017 | 42,571 |
| 2018 | 40,743 |
| 2019 | 4,478 |
| 2020 | 31,318 |
| 2021 | 41,952 |
| 2022 | 33,547 |
| 2023 | 34,837 |
| 2024 | 29,700 |
| 2025 | 29,182 |
New Jersey's trajectory above illustrates the broader pattern: the states that already lean hard on H-1B labor have tended to lean harder over time, which is why the intensity gap between the leaders and the middle of the pack has widened rather than closed. For the national backdrop, the 15-year filings and wage story puts this state-level trend in context.
How to use this if you're job-hunting or benchmarking
If you are weighing offers, the per-capita ranking is a rough proxy for how normal H-1B sponsorship is in a given state's labor market — a dense, high-intensity state like New Jersey or Washington will have more employers who file routinely. But intensity says nothing about your occupation or your wage. For that, drill down:
- Compare filings and wages for your role, such as software developers or data scientists.
- Look at a specific high-intensity state like Washington or New Jersey to see which employers and occupations drive its numbers.
- Cross-reference a sponsor's record before you sign — the raw-volume leaders and the per-capita leaders are not always the same companies.
The takeaway
Raw volume answers "where are the most H-1B filings?" — and the answer is overwhelmingly California. Per-capita intensity answers a better question: "which state economies lean hardest on H-1B labor relative to their own workforce?" On that measure the map reorders. New Jersey takes the crown, Washington and Massachusetts sit near the top on the strength of concentrated tech and research hiring, and small-state Delaware over-indexes for reasons that have as much to do with corporate structure as with local jobs. Normalize the data and the story stops being about size and starts being about intensity.
- H-1B
- states
- per capita
- LCA data
- labor market