We broke down all 437,496 FY2026 H-1B labor applications by employer type — government agencies, universities, K-12 schools, and private business — plus a size and legal-dependency split inside the private sector.
The headline: true state, local, and federal government agencies filed just 499 applications directly. Even after tracing contractor placements at government worksites (IT staffing firms placing workers inside state agencies, and a separate niche of therapy-staffing firms placing H-1B occupational and speech therapists in school districts), the government footprint only reaches 0.73% of all filings.
The bigger, harder story is inside the private sector: 102 large filers — 0.18% of private employers — account for 64% of all positions requested, and DOL’s own legal ‘H-1B dependent’ designation turns out to track the ‘Intel good, Infosys bad’ distinction far better than company size does.