At least 35.9 postings say they will not sponsor a visa for every one that says it will. JobShifu measures this by crawling employer applicant-tracking systems directly rather than buying a job feed, so what is counted here is what the employer wrote, not a job board's summary of it.
Of 1,410,858 postings read, 2,537 state that sponsorship is available and 91,191 state that it is not. 93.4% say nothing either way, which is the number worth planning around: silence is not a no, and it is not a yes. The method changed between 2026-09-13 and 2026-09-15, so this is not comparable with the edition of 2026-09-08 (7.3 to 1).
United States, by function
Ordered by how often a posting says it will sponsor. Sponsorship is a country-specific question, so this table is US postings only.
| Function | Examined | Employers | Says it will | Says it will not |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Education | 6,852 | 894 | 0.92% | 8.14% |
| Data & Analytics | 13,829 | 2,958 | 0.8% | 15.82% |
| Software Engineering | 45,963 | 4,544 | 0.78% | 11.06% |
| Product | 6,218 | 1,905 | 0.64% | 16.74% |
| Marketing | 10,403 | 3,253 | 0.49% | 12.09% |
| Design | 7,228 | 1,964 | 0.4% | 16.66% |
| Engineering | 38,325 | 2,327 | 0.35% | 17.24% |
| Procurement & Supply Chain | 7,124 | 1,736 | 0.29% | 13.81% |
| Project & Program Mgmt | 13,423 | 2,529 | 0.28% | 13.04% |
| (not tagged) | 219,441 | 8,206 | 0.17% | 10.26% |
| Medical & Clinical | 80,683 | 1,684 | 0.15% | 2.36% |
| Finance & Accounting | 31,778 | 3,963 | 0.14% | 20.61% |
| Customer Support | 25,600 | 2,957 | 0.1% | 10.62% |
| Sales & Account Mgmt | 44,600 | 4,286 | 0.09% | 11.25% |
| Operations & Admin | 47,305 | 4,441 | 0.08% | 6.56% |
| Skilled Trades & Mfg | 62,036 | 3,123 | 0.06% | 11.73% |
| Security & Protective Services | 5,345 | 614 | 0.06% | 3.18% |
| Construction & Facilities | 10,851 | 1,439 | 0.05% | 8.35% |
| Logistics & Warehouse | 40,905 | 2,041 | 0.03% | 5.53% |
| Nursing & Allied Health | 74,530 | 979 | 0.02% | 1.38% |
| Retail | 92,313 | 796 | 0% | 2.31% |
| Food & Hospitality | 43,134 | 862 | 0% | 1.04% |
Software Engineering is the field most associated with sponsorship, and even there 14 postings say they will not for every one that says it will.
What a rate cannot tell you
A rate describes a market. It cannot tell you whether the posting you are looking at is one of them. That is a different question, and it is settled by one requisition's own crawl history: the date the posting was first seen, whether the same requisition was listed before, and how long it has been up since.
Check one posting → · Search open jobs → · See roles as employers open them →
Common questions
How many job postings say they will sponsor a visa?
0.18% of 1,410,858 postings read state that visa sponsorship is available, against 6.46% that state it is not: at least 35.9 refusals for every offer. The remaining 93.4% do not mention sponsorship at all.
If a job posting says nothing about sponsorship, does that mean no?
Not on the evidence of the posting. 93.4% of the postings read never raise sponsorship, and this report records that silence as its own state rather than counting it as a refusal. For a silent posting, the employer is the only source of an answer.
Which US job functions offer visa sponsorship most often?
Among US functions with at least 5,000 postings read, Education states that sponsorship is available most often, in 0.92% of postings. Software engineering postings state it in 0.78% and rule it out in 11.06%.
How this was measured
The method changed between 2026-09-13 and 2026-09-15. The classifier that reads sponsorship statements was rebuilt. The earlier one counted form lines such as "Is sponsorship available? No" as offers and missed about half of explicit refusals, so it understated the ratio. Editions before 2026-09-15, including the 7.3 to 1 published on 2026-09-08, were measured differently and are not comparable with this one.
The ratio is a floor. Every posting counted was read by the classifier, but some refusals are worded in ways it does not yet catch. A check on 2026-09-30 found that about 1% of the postings counted as silent still mention visa or immigration sponsorship, and in a hand-read sample about half of those were refusals. Offers are over-read slightly too: a few postings that offer to sponsor a security clearance, or that list sponsorship as a benefit for other roles, are counted as offers. Both errors pull the ratio down, so the real one is higher than shown.
A posting that rules sponsorship out is counted as a no, even if it also mentions one kind it will support. "We can transfer an existing H-1B but cannot sponsor a new one" is a no to anyone who needs a new visa, which is almost everyone asking.
Silence is not permission. An employer that says nothing may sponsor, may not, or may never have considered it. The only thing this measures is what the posting states, which is also the only thing you can know before you ask.
A function is shown only where at least 5,000 US postings were read and at least 5 employers are represented.
Data and citation
Every figure above comes from one snapshot file, published so the numbers can be checked, replotted or reused: visa-sponsorship.json (JSON, updated 2026-10-04). It is the same file this page is built from, so there is no version of these numbers that is not in it.
License. CC BY 4.0. Use the figures anywhere, including commercially, as long as JobShifu is credited.
Cite as. JobShifu (2026). Visa sponsorship statements in job postings. https://jobshifu.com/research/visa-sponsorship