Large companies file with the U.S. Department of Labor before they can sponsor a skilled foreign worker. Those filings are public. The Hiring filings block on a company page counts them for each S&P 500 company, quarter by quarter.
LCA filings are intent, not hires
An H-1B Labor Condition Application (LCA) is the employer's statement of the job, the wage and the worksite. It is certified before the visa petition is filed and before anyone starts work. Many certified LCAs never become petitions. One LCA can cover several positions. Extensions and transfers of people already employed file LCAs too. Read the count as a company's stated demand for skilled visa workers, not as hires or headcount.
Where to find it
Open a company's Discourse page, for example palanor.com/discourse/companies/MSFT. The Hiring filings block sits under Federal contracts, Lobbying and Patents. Companies with no matched filings don't show it.
What the block shows
- **Certified H-1B LCAs.** The last four complete quarters, with the change against the four before.
- **Median offered wage.** The low end of the offered range, annualized, over certified full-time H-1B LCAs in the latest quarter.
- **Computer and math roles.** The share of certified LCAs in computer and mathematical occupations.
- **PERM certified.** Green-card labor certifications over the last four quarters.
- **By quarter.** A bar for each complete quarter. Hover a bar for its count.
- **Top job titles and occupations.** As the employer filed them, for the latest quarter.
- **Primary worksite states.** Where the roles are based, for the latest quarter.
How companies are matched
The filings name an employer, not a ticker. A filing counts toward a company only when the employer name matches the company's own SEC name or a subsidiary listed in its annual report exactly, or is the same legal entity as one that does. Names that only look close, such as a university that shares a word with a company, are left out rather than guessed. A few spellings were checked by hand. Attribution follows today's corporate family, so a subsidiary acquired in 2025 counts toward its new parent for earlier quarters too.
Quarters and timing
Quarters are calendar quarters, by the date the Department of Labor decided the application. The Department publishes its files a few weeks after each federal fiscal quarter ends, so the newest quarter is usually two to four months old. H-1B filings bunch in the spring, when the annual cap season opens, so compare a quarter with the same quarter a year earlier. The fourth quarter of 2025 is low because of the federal government shutdown.
Signals
Two signals track the S&P 500 as a whole: S&P 500 H-1B Visa Filings, the count of certified LCAs each quarter, and Tech Share of S&P 500 H-1B Filings, the share in computer and mathematical roles. Both can go in scenarios like any other signal.
API and Palanor MCP
The same numbers are available at /v1/hiring on the Palanor API and through the palanor_company_hiring tool on the Palanor MCP. Every quarter carries its source.
Source
U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure data, fiscal year 2020 onward. It is public domain. Use of it does not imply the Department's endorsement.