Industry comparison

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services vs Health Care & Social Assistance

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

Summary

Health Care & Social Assistance and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services represent two of the largest H-1B sponsoring sectors in the U.S. economy, though at vastly different scales.

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services dominates H-1B sponsorship, with 5.36 million filings from 57,468 employers. This sector — encompassing software development, engineering, IT consulting, and research — accounts for the majority of H-1B visa petitions annually. Health Care & Social Assistance, while significant, filed 383,320 H-1B petitions across 13,141 employers, roughly one-fourteenth the volume. Health Care's sponsorship concentration is higher: its 29 employers per 100 filings compares to Professional Services' 11 per 100 filings, reflecting more specialized, distributed hiring.

Both sectors rely on H-1B visas to fill skilled workforce gaps. Professional Services uses H-1B sponsorship to bring specialized technical talent, often at multiple offices nationwide. Health Care's smaller but meaningful H-1B cohort supports physicians, nurses, specialized therapists, and medical researchers in high-demand roles and underserved regions.

Health Care vs Professional Services H-1B
H-1B filings by sector comparison
Professional Services H-1B sponsorship
Health Care H-1B visa trends
sector H-1B employer analysis

Sector A

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

NAICS 54Rank #1

Sector B

Health Care & Social Assistance

NAICS 62Rank #6

Key metrics

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

Metric	Professional, Scientific & Technical Services	Health Care & Social Assistance
Total filings	5,362,182▲	383,320
National share %	57.46%▲	4.11%
Distinct sponsors	57,468▲	13,141
Filings / employer	93	29
Rank	#1▲	#6
Top sponsor	INFOSYS LIMITED	General Hospital Corporation
Top occupation	Software Developers	Physicians, All Other

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

Health Care & Social Assistance

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	26,430
FY2011	23,800
FY2012	23,070
FY2013	21,135
FY2014	21,240
FY2015	21,154
FY2016	21,615
FY2017	21,197
FY2018	22,736
FY2019	20,895
FY2020	19,124
FY2021	30,749
FY2022	22,415
FY2023	26,181
FY2024	23,804
FY2025	27,620
FY2026	10,155