Brief

Software developers: 31.8% of certified H-1B applications in fiscal 2025

American Factbook

Published November 7, 2026

Data retrieved November 6, 2026

The Department of Labor certified 529,460 H-1B applications in fiscal 2025, and 168,468 of them, or 31.8%, were for software developers (SOC 15-1252). The ten occupations with the most certified applications held 332,317 between them, or 62.8%; the chart draws each of the ten as a share of the year's certified applications.

Software developers were 31.8% of certified H-1B applications in fiscal 2025

The ten occupations with the most H-1B applications the Department of Labor certified in fiscal 2025, each as a share of every certified H-1B application that year.

An occupation is the SOC code on the application, named by the title filed with it most. The other occupations, several hundred of them, are not drawn.

Source: The Department of Labor’s LCA disclosure data

About this chart

The figures

Software developers were 31.8% of certified H-1B applications in fiscal 2025. The ten occupations with the most H-1B applications the Department of Labor certified in fiscal 2025, each as a share of every certified H-1B application that year.
Occupation	Share of certified H-1B applications	Certified applications
Software Developers	31.8%	168,468
Computer Systems Engineers/Architects	8.9%	47,005
Data Scientists	5.9%	31,040
Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers	3.5%	18,356
Computer Programmers	2.5%	13,160
Computer Systems Analysts	2.4%	12,710
Computer and Information Systems Managers	2.3%	12,435
Mechanical Engineers	1.9%	9,949
Industrial Engineers	1.8%	9,784
Accountants and Auditors	1.8%	9,410

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In fiscal 2024 the share was 32.9%: 160,920 of 488,417. Between the two years software developers' certified applications rose by 7,548 and their share fell, as certified applications in every occupation together grew by more.

The median wage offered on certified full-time software developer applications paid by the year was $137,700 in fiscal 2025, over 159,908 such applications. Over all 492,684 certified full-time H-1B applications paid by the year, it was $122,699.

What the figures count

Each figure counts Labor Condition Applications the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification certified for H-1B workers, in OFLC's fiscal year, October to September. An application is the employer's filing with the Department of Labor, made before it petitions U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is not a worker hired and not a visa, which USCIS decides afterwards, and one application can ask for more than one position. Fiscal 2026 is left out: the files do not yet hold the whole year, and a share of part of a year is not set beside a whole one.

The wage is the offered wage on the application, the lower end of its range where the employer gave one, and each median is over certified full-time applications whose wage is paid by the year.

What it cannot show

The files do not say how many of these applications became approved petitions, how many workers started, or what any of them was paid. They do not say why the share of software developers fell between the two years, and this brief does not compare the wages of one year with another.

What this cannot show

An occupation is the six-digit SOC code the employer put on the application, named by the title filed with it most. OFLC does not check that the job described is the one done, and two codes for similar work are separate rows here and are never added together.

Sources

U.S. Department of Labor — LCA Disclosure Data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3), U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Foreign Labor Certification. Public domain — U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved November 6, 2026.

Every figure above is the recorded result of a query checked into the repository alongside this text. Continuous integration re-runs those queries and refuses the change if a number here and a number there disagree. Read the methodology, or the datasets behind it.

Published by the American Factbook. An independent publication.

How to cite this page

Cite the page’s address and the date printed on it, and name U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Foreign Labor Certification as the source of the figures.

American Factbook. “Software developers: 31.8% of certified H-1B applications in fiscal 2025.” Updated November 7, 2026. https://americanfactbook.org/h1b/analysis/h1b-software-developers-share. Source: U.S. Department of Labor — LCA Disclosure Data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3), https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/performance.