Industry comparison

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services vs Finance & Insurance

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

Summary

Finance & Insurance and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services are two major H-1B sponsoring sectors, but they differ significantly in scale.

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services dominates H-1B activity with 5.36 million filings across 57,468 employers, making it by far the largest H-1B sector. Finance & Insurance is substantially smaller, with 588,317 filings from 9,250 employers. The difference in filing volume reflects the tech-heavy nature of the Professional Services sector, which includes software development, IT consulting, and engineering roles that rely heavily on H-1B workers.

Both sectors actively sponsor H-1B workers, but Professional Services attracts roughly nine times more filings. Finance & Insurance filings concentrate among fewer employers, suggesting larger financial institutions dominate H-1B sponsorship in that sector, while Professional Services benefits from a more distributed sponsor base across consulting firms, tech companies, and specialized service providers.

H-1B filings by sector
Finance vs Professional Services H-1B
NAICS sector H-1B comparison
tech sector H-1B sponsorship
financial services H-1B sponsorship

Sector A

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

NAICS 54Rank #1

Sector B

Finance & Insurance

NAICS 52Rank #5

Key metrics

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

Metric	Professional, Scientific & Technical Services	Finance & Insurance
Total filings	5,362,182▲	588,317
National share %	57.46%▲	6.30%
Distinct sponsors	57,468▲	9,250
Filings / employer	93	64
Rank	#1▲	#5
Top sponsor	INFOSYS LIMITED	GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	162,393
FY2011	184,930
FY2012	237,548
FY2013	270,996
FY2014	334,578
FY2015	420,866
FY2016	442,248
FY2017	408,878
FY2018	415,563
FY2019	418,841
FY2020	341,992
FY2021	433,810
FY2022	318,868
FY2023	324,927
FY2024	279,362
FY2025	273,304
FY2026	93,078

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