Top 10 US Metros by H-1B Employer Concentration
PlainEmployers metropolitan area rollup ranking US metros by number of employers with H-1B filings, refreshed automatically whenever new DOL disclosure data is published.
Research period:
Research question
Across US metropolitan statistical areas, which concentrate the highest number of H-1B-filing employers, and how does metro-level concentration compare to total filing volume?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete ETL pipeline, source vintage, and column lineage.
Top 10 US Metros by H-1B Employer Concentration
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Metro area | Employers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York, NY | 3,376 |
| 2 | San Francisco, CA | 1,224 |
| 3 | Houston, TX | 1,044 |
| 4 | Austin, TX | 999 |
| 5 | Chicago, IL | 993 |
| 6 | Plano, TX | 878 |
| 7 | Irving, TX | 833 |
| 8 | Dallas, TX | 701 |
| 9 | Atlanta, GA | 654 |
| 10 | San Jose, CA | 627 |
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, DOL H-1B Disclosure Data + Census MSA boundaries. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is New York, NY, with a value of 3,376 on the Employers column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the source agency publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (3,376) and the 10th-ranked record (627) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Department of Labor, specifically the DOL H-1B Disclosure Data + Census MSA boundaries. PlainEmployers ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Metro-level concentration reflects the primary worksite on each LCA, which is the employer-declared location. Multi-site employers can appear in multiple metros; the count column dedupes by employer-metro pair. Metro boundaries follow OMB Metropolitan Statistical Area definitions; CBSA boundary changes between Census release cycles can cause apparent shifts in concentration that reflect classification, not employer movement. The dataset excludes employers below the threshold for LCA disclosure (typically zero filings in the reporting period) so metros with very small H-1B activity may show zero rather than a low non-zero count. Geographic concentration also reflects industry clustering, Tech-heavy metros over-index relative to their general employment share.
Secondary cut from the same source
Extended ranking, top 20 metros by H-1B-filing employer count
Sources
- DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, H-1B Disclosure Data - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/performance
- U.S. Census Bureau, Metropolitan Statistical Area definitions - https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/metro-micro.html