Industry comparison

Wholesale Trade 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 (NAICS 52) and Wholesale Trade (NAICS 42) represent two distinct sectors in the H-1B labor market, with markedly different sponsorship scales.

Finance & Insurance leads significantly on H-1B filings, with 588,317 total filings across 9,250 employers. Wholesale Trade filed 118,161 petitions across 7,818 employers—roughly one-fifth the volume. Finance & Insurance's larger filing count reflects its reliance on specialized roles in banking, investment management, and insurance underwriting, as well as higher average wages that make H-1B sponsorship economically viable at scale.

While Wholesale Trade has a slightly lower employer count, its filing-to-employer ratio is tighter, suggesting more selective H-1B use. Finance & Insurance's ratio of 63.5 filings per employer versus Wholesale Trade's 15.1 indicates that finance firms sponsor H-1B workers far more extensively per sponsoring company.

Finance and Insurance H-1B filings
Wholesale Trade H-1B sponsorship
H-1B sectors comparison
Finance vs Wholesale H-1B
NAICS 52 vs NAICS 42

Sector A

Wholesale Trade

NAICS 42Rank #9

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	Wholesale Trade	Finance & Insurance
Total filings	118,161	588,317▲
National share %	1.27%	6.30%▲
Distinct sponsors	7,818	9,250▲
Filings / employer	15	64
Rank	#9	#5▲
Top sponsor	Dell Marketing L.P.	GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC
Top occupation	Software Developers	Software Developers

Filings by fiscal year

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

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

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