Industry comparison

Manufacturing (paper/chemicals) vs Information

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

Summary

The Information sector and Manufacturing (paper/chemicals) represent two very different scales of H-1B sponsorship. Information leads decisively on filings with 624,447 petitions from 11,007 employers, while Manufacturing filed 119,027 petitions across 4,712 employers—about one-fifth the volume.

Information's larger filing count reflects its heavy reliance on skilled foreign talent for software, IT, and telecommunications roles. Manufacturing's lower filings are concentrated in specialized technical and engineering positions, particularly in chemicals and paper processing. Information also sponsors through far more employers: 11,007 vs 4,712, indicating more distributed sponsorship across diverse tech companies, whereas manufacturing concentration is tighter.

For job seekers, Information offers more H-1B opportunity volume and employer choice, while Manufacturing roles tend toward deeper specialization in production and process engineering.

Information vs Manufacturing H-1B
H-1B filings by sector
tech vs manufacturing sponsorship
H-1B employer comparison
Information technology H-1B
manufacturing H-1B petitions

Sector A

Manufacturing (paper/chemicals)

NAICS 32Rank #8

Sector B

Information

NAICS 51Rank #3

Key metrics

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

Metric	Manufacturing (paper/chemicals)	Information
Total filings	119,027	624,447▲
National share %	1.28%	6.69%▲
Distinct sponsors	4,712	11,007▲
Filings / employer	25	57
Rank	#8	#3▲
Top sponsor	Bristol-Myers Squibb Company	Microsoft Corporation
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

Manufacturing (paper/chemicals)

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	4,986
FY2011	5,266
FY2012	5,421
FY2013	5,098
FY2014	5,815
FY2015	6,136
FY2016	6,406
FY2017	7,243
FY2018	7,664
FY2019	8,270
FY2020	7,489
FY2021	12,502
FY2022	8,500
FY2023	8,497
FY2024	7,756
FY2025	9,221
FY2026	2,757

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