Industry comparison

Finance & Insurance vs Retail Trade (general)

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

Summary

Finance & Insurance and Retail Trade represent two distinct patterns in H-1B sponsorship. Finance & Insurance (NAICS 52) has filed 588,317 H-1B petitions across 9,250 employers, establishing it as a major sponsor of specialty occupation workers. Retail Trade (NAICS 45) has filed 250,553 petitions across 2,757 employers, reflecting significantly lower overall H-1B activity in the sector.

Finance & Insurance sponsors more than twice as many H-1B workers as Retail Trade, reflecting the sector's reliance on specialized roles in banking, investment, insurance underwriting, and fintech. Finance & Insurance also maintains a larger employer base, with 3.4 times as many sponsoring companies. Retail Trade's lower filing volume aligns with the sector's workforce composition, which typically emphasizes entry-level and customer-facing roles filled domestically.

Both sectors show distinct H-1B strategies: Finance & Insurance concentrates sponsorships among a relatively large set of employers, while Retail Trade's smaller employer count indicates more concentrated sponsorship among a narrower set of retailers willing to pursue specialty occupation hiring.

Finance Insurance vs Retail Trade H-1B
H-1B sponsorship by sector
NAICS 52 vs NAICS 45 H-1B
which sector sponsors more H-1B
H-1B filings comparison

Sector A

Finance & Insurance

NAICS 52Rank #5

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	Finance & Insurance	Retail Trade (general)
Total filings	588,317▲	250,553
National share %	6.30%▲	2.68%
Distinct sponsors	9,250▲	2,757
Filings / employer	64	91
Rank	#5▲	#7
Top sponsor	GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC	AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC (VA)
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

Finance & Insurance

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	18,669
FY2011	18,090
FY2012	18,557
FY2013	19,216
FY2014	22,794
FY2015	27,044
FY2016	28,760
FY2017	32,036
FY2018	38,729
FY2019	39,814
FY2020	39,659
FY2021	69,522
FY2022	51,485
FY2023	51,662
FY2024	42,693
FY2025	50,637
FY2026	18,950

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