Industry comparison

Educational Services vs Retail Trade (general)

NAICS-sector comparison built from the H1B Report corpus. Filing volume, distinct sponsor count, sponsor concentration and dominant occupations.

Summary

Educational Services and Retail Trade represent starkly different scales of H-1B sponsorship activity. Educational Services leads decisively with 613,346 total filings across 6,945 employers, while Retail Trade filed 250,553 cases from 2,757 employers. This reflects the sector composition of visa demand: universities, colleges, and training institutions sponsor large cohorts of foreign workers for faculty, research, and technical roles, whereas retail employers sponsor fewer H-1B positions overall.

Retail Trade's lower filing count aligns with sector economics—retail roles typically emphasize domestic labor supply and lower skill classifications. Educational Services' ratio of ~88 filings per employer versus Retail Trade's ~91 filings per employer shows both sectors concentrate sponsorship among a smaller set of active employers. The disparity underscores how H-1B usage concentrates in knowledge-intensive sectors with credentialed role requirements rather than general commerce.

Educational Services vs Retail Trade H-1B
H-1B filings by sector comparison
Education sector H-1B sponsorship
Retail industry H-1B demand
NAICS sector H-1B analysis
H-1B visa sponsorship patterns

Sector A

Educational Services

NAICS 61Rank #4

Sector B

Retail Trade (general)

NAICS 45Rank #7

Key metrics

Filings / employer is a concentration hint — higher means a few sponsors do most of the filing.

Metric	Educational Services	Retail Trade (general)
Total filings	613,346▲	250,553
National share %	6.57%▲	2.68%
Distinct sponsors	6,945▲	2,757
Filings / employer	88	91
Rank	#4▲	#7
Top sponsor	University of Michigan	AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC (VA)
Top occupation	Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

Year-over-year H-1B demand within each sector.

Educational Services

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	39,175
FY2011	34,146
FY2012	35,379
FY2013	34,165
FY2014	33,842
FY2015	34,126
FY2016	34,254
FY2017	32,741
FY2018	34,175
FY2019	34,638
FY2020	29,870
FY2021	48,175
FY2022	36,695
FY2023	46,343
FY2024	41,453
FY2025	45,692
FY2026	18,477

Retail Trade (general)

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	3,089
FY2011	3,674
FY2012	4,146
FY2013	4,743
FY2014	6,059
FY2015	7,463
FY2016	8,728
FY2017	11,457
FY2018	13,585
FY2019	17,470
FY2020	22,645
FY2021	33,213
FY2022	27,820
FY2023	27,462
FY2024	24,688
FY2025	26,082
FY2026	8,229