Industry comparison

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services vs Information

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

Summary

Information (NAICS 51) and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services (NAICS 54) are the two largest H-1B sponsoring sectors, though they differ substantially in scale.

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services leads decisively on H-1B activity. It accounts for 5.36 million filings across 57,468 employers—nearly nine times the filing volume of Information. This sector encompasses engineering, IT consulting, scientific R&D, and technical design work, drawing heavy international talent for specialized roles.

Information (51) filed 624,447 H-1B petitions across 11,007 employers. Though smaller in absolute numbers, Information remains a significant H-1B sponsor, covering software development, telecommunications, data processing, and digital media. Professional Services sponsors nearly five times as many employers and sustains a much larger intake of visa-dependent workers overall.

H-1B Information sector
H-1B Professional Services filings
Information vs Professional Services H-1B
H-1B tech sector comparison
NAICS 51 vs NAICS 54 H-1B

Sector A

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

NAICS 54Rank #1

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	Professional, Scientific & Technical Services	Information
Total filings	5,362,182▲	624,447
National share %	57.46%▲	6.69%
Distinct sponsors	57,468▲	11,007
Filings / employer	93	57
Rank	#1▲	#3
Top sponsor	INFOSYS LIMITED	Microsoft Corporation
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

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