Industry comparison

Retail Trade (general) vs Wholesale Trade

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

Summary

Retail Trade and Wholesale Trade represent distinct approaches to H-1B sponsorship in the U.S. goods economy. Retail Trade has filed 250,553 H-1B applications across 2,757 employers, while Wholesale Trade has filed 118,161 applications across 7,818 employers.

Retail Trade dominates in total H-1B volume, accounting for more than double the filings of Wholesale Trade. This reflects Retail's larger concentration of foreign-worker recruitment, likely driven by specialized retail management, technology, and merchandising roles. Wholesale Trade, by contrast, spreads its H-1B sponsorship across a much wider employer base—nearly 3x more companies—suggesting a more distributed labor strategy and reliance on foreign talent across smaller, decentralized operations.

While Retail Trade leads in filing intensity, Wholesale Trade's broader employer participation indicates H-1B sponsorship is embedded across more independent players in the supply chain. Both sectors show meaningful H-1B activity, with Retail emphasizing concentrated high-volume recruitment and Wholesale emphasizing distributed access.

Retail Trade H-1B filings
Wholesale Trade H-1B sponsorship
H-1B comparison retail wholesale
H-1B employers retail vs wholesale
goods sector H-1B activity

Sector A

Retail Trade (general)

NAICS 45Rank #7

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	Retail Trade (general)	Wholesale Trade
Total filings	250,553▲	118,161
National share %	2.68%▲	1.27%
Distinct sponsors	2,757	7,818▲
Filings / employer	91	15
Rank	#7▲	#9
Top sponsor	AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC (VA)	Dell Marketing L.P.
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

Retail Trade (general)

Time series
Period	Value
FY2010	3,089
FY2011	3,674
FY2012	4,146
FY2013	4,743
FY2014	6,059
FY2015	7,463
FY2016	8,728
FY2017	11,457
FY2018	13,585
FY2019	17,470
FY2020	22,645
FY2021	33,213
FY2022	27,820
FY2023	27,462
FY2024	24,688
FY2025	26,082
FY2026	8,229

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