Industry comparison

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services vs Wholesale Trade

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

Summary

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services (NAICS 54) and Wholesale Trade (NAICS 42) show starkly different H-1B sponsorship patterns. Professional Services leads dramatically with 5.36 million filings across 57,468 employers, while Wholesale Trade accounts for 118,161 filings from 7,818 employers—a 45-fold difference in filing volume.

Professional Services' heavy H-1B reliance reflects its composition: software development, engineering, consulting, and IT services firms that routinely sponsor temporary skilled workers. Wholesale Trade's minimal H-1B presence aligns with its business model, which typically relies on domestic labor and supply-chain logistics rather than specialty visa sponsorship.

By employer count, Professional Services also leads substantially, with 57,468 H-1B sponsors compared to 7,818 in Wholesale Trade. This gap underscores that H-1B sponsorship is concentrated in knowledge-intensive sectors rather than commodity-focused industries.

Professional Services H-1B filings
Wholesale Trade H-1B sponsorship
H-1B sector comparison
NAICS 54 vs NAICS 42
H-1B employer trends by industry

Sector A

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

NAICS 54Rank #1

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	Professional, Scientific & Technical Services	Wholesale Trade
Total filings	5,362,182▲	118,161
National share %	57.46%▲	1.27%
Distinct sponsors	57,468▲	7,818
Filings / employer	93	15
Rank	#1▲	#9
Top sponsor	INFOSYS LIMITED	Dell Marketing L.P.
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

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