Industry comparison

Information vs Wholesale Trade

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

Summary

Information and Wholesale Trade represent distinct scales of H-1B sponsorship in the U.S. economy. The Information sector leads significantly with 624,447 total filings across 11,007 employers, reflecting its heavy reliance on specialized technical and professional talent. Wholesale Trade, by contrast, accounts for 118,161 filings from 7,818 employers—a five-fold difference in filing volume.

Information's dominance reflects the sector's concentration of software engineers, data scientists, IT architects, and other high-skill roles that regularly sponsor H-1B workers. Wholesale Trade, while active in H-1B sponsorship, pursues fewer visa-based hires relative to its employer base, suggesting a greater reliance on domestic labor or alternative hiring strategies. Information also maintains a higher employer-to-filing ratio (57 filings per employer) compared to Wholesale Trade (15 filings per employer), indicating more intensive and repeated sponsorship activity.

H-1B Information sector filings
Wholesale Trade H-1B sponsorship
Information vs Wholesale Trade visa
NAICS 51 vs NAICS 42 H-1B
H-1B filings by sector comparison

Sector A

Information

NAICS 51Rank #3

Sector B

Wholesale Trade

NAICS 42Rank #9

Key metrics

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

Metric	Information	Wholesale Trade
Total filings	624,447▲	118,161
National share %	6.69%▲	1.27%
Distinct sponsors	11,007▲	7,818
Filings / employer	57	15
Rank	#3▲	#9
Top sponsor	Microsoft Corporation	Dell Marketing L.P.
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

Information

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	18,990
FY2011	20,340
FY2012	21,781
FY2013	21,714
FY2014	24,089
FY2015	27,468
FY2016	30,224
FY2017	32,458
FY2018	37,065
FY2019	39,766
FY2020	40,038
FY2021	70,034
FY2022	60,549
FY2023	54,770
FY2024	49,619
FY2025	55,080
FY2026	20,462

Wholesale Trade

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	7,558
FY2011	6,511
FY2012	6,434
FY2013	6,584
FY2014	7,128
FY2015	7,692
FY2016	8,054
FY2017	7,652
FY2018	7,960
FY2019	8,069
FY2020	6,028
FY2021	8,904
FY2022	6,766
FY2023	6,670
FY2024	6,255
FY2025	7,627
FY2026	2,269