H-1B and layoffs: Google doubled new H-1B hires in a layoff year

Short answer: Yes, the companies cutting US tech jobs in 2026 kept hiring on H-1B visas, and some sped up. Google got 2,201 new-hire H-1B approvals in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, more than double its 1,042 for all of fiscal 2025, per the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub. On September 23, 2026 the White House told agencies to start weighing exactly that: "whether the employer sponsor directly or indirectly engaged in layoffs within the previous year." We built the list they will be looking at.

TL;DR: We joined three federal and state datasets nobody had lined up company by company: USCIS approvals, 60,133 Labor Department H-1B applications certified for 27 companies that cut US jobs in 2026, and 20,558 workers on state layoff (WARN) notices. Google, Apple, Salesforce, TCS and Infosys passed their full fiscal 2025 new-hire approvals in nine months; Amazon hit 6,031 against 4,637 while booking $2.7 billion of severance. We found 28 cases where a company got H-1B applications certified in the same state and the same month it filed a layoff notice, led by Amazon in Washington in January 2026: 1,159 applications, 2,599 workers on notice. All of it was legal, because the 90-day layoff ban only covers a small class of "H-1B dependent" employers, and none of these giants is one.

Key numbers

What	Number	Source, checked Oct 29 2026
Google new-hire H-1B approvals, FY2026 Oct to Jun vs all FY2025	2,201 vs 1,042 (211%)	USCIS Data Hub FY2026
Amazon new-hire H-1B approvals, same comparison	6,031 vs 4,637 (130%)	USCIS Data Hub FY2025
Apple new-hire H-1B approvals	1,514 vs 822 (184%)	USCIS Data Hub FY2026
H-1B labor applications (LCAs) certified for 27 companies with 2026 layoffs, Oct 2025 to Jun 2026	60,133	DOL LCA disclosure FY2026 Q3
Workers on 2026 WARN notices from big tech and IT employers, WA + CA + TX	20,558	California EDD WARN report
Same company, same state, same month: H-1B applications certified and a layoff notice filed	28 pairs	our join (CSV)
Amazon severance recorded in 2025	$2.7 billion	Amazon 10-K
Meta severance for the May 2026 cut of about 8,000 people	$1.18 billion	Meta 10-Q

The order that makes this list matter

On September 23, 2026 the Federal Register published a presidential order, "Enhancing Program Integrity and Interagency Coordination in the Administration of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program." It tells Labor, State and Homeland Security to "take into account in any labor condition application, petition, visa, and entry" whether the sponsor "engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs."

The order names no companies. The public records already do. Every number below comes from a dataset any agency official, reporter or laid-off engineer can download today.

Nine months, more new H-1B hires than all of last year

The USCIS hub counts approved petitions by type. "New employment" is the cleanest signal of fresh hiring: a worker starting H-1B employment, not a renewal or a transfer between employers.

Fiscal 2026 runs October 2025 to September 2026, and USCIS has published through June. So these companies hit their full prior-year totals with a quarter still uncounted:

• Google: 2,201 new-hire approvals vs 1,042 in all of fiscal 2025.
• Apple: 1,514 vs 822. Salesforce: 245 vs 134. Amazon: 6,031 vs 4,637.
• Infosys: 2,111 vs 263, eight times the prior year. TCS: 1,557 vs 846.

Not everyone. Microsoft fell to 542 from 1,394, Meta to 887 from 1,554 and Intel to 184 from 632. The split is the story: some firms cut and kept recruiting abroad at a faster pace, others cut both.

Same state, same month

A layoff notice under the WARN Act (a federal law that makes big employers give 60 days' warning of mass cuts) is filed with the state. An H-1B labor condition application (LCA, the Labor Department form an employer files before the visa petition) names a worksite state and gets a decision date. We matched them.

In January 2026, Washington's WARN database shows Amazon notices covering 2,599 workers. The same month, the Labor Department certified 1,159 Amazon H-1B applications for Washington worksites. In May 2026, Meta's California notices covered 1,058 workers while 862 Meta applications for California were certified; in Washington the same month, 1,395 on notice and 370 certified.

We count 28 of these pairs from January to June 2026. Same state and month is not proof of the same jobs, and we do not claim it is. It is exactly the overlap the new order asks agencies to weigh.

The scale: 60,133 applications from companies that cut

Across 27 companies that announced or filed 2026 layoffs, the Labor Department certified 60,133 H-1B applications from October 2025 to June 2026. That is about 15% of every certified LCA in the country in that window (401,412).

Amazon alone accounts for 20,217, up 5.2% on the same months a year earlier, with "Software Dev Engineer II" the top title (3,419). Google had 7,429, and 60% were "Software Engineer." An LCA is a permission to hire, not a visa or a hire, so this is the ceiling of intent, not a headcount.

Follow the money: severance on one side, lobbying on the other

The layoffs were expensive. Amazon recorded about $2.7 billion of severance in 2025. Meta booked $1.18 billion for its May 2026 cut of about 8,000 people. Oracle's fiscal 2026 restructuring hit $1,779 million, up 496%. Intel's 2025 plan cost $2.2 billion. Salesforce: $586 million.

What they tell investors about H-1B: almost nothing. In SEC full-text search of 10-K and 10-Q filings from October 2025, only Cognizant among our targets uses the word "H-1B." Microsoft's 10-K says it is "limited in our ability to recruit internationally by restrictive domestic immigration laws."

What they tell Congress is sharper. In Senate lobbying reports from 2025 through the third quarter of 2026, Google's own filings list "H-1B visa reform" in 8 reports, Microsoft's outside firm the Gibson Group wrote "Monitor H1-B visas" in 7, and every Cognizant report from mid-2025 names S. 2928, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, the Grassley-Durbin bill that would extend layoff protections. Amazon, Meta, Apple and Salesforce filed on immigration every quarter and never once wrote "H-1B." The bill has sat in committee since September 29, 2025.

Why all of it is legal

Every LCA attests to wages and working conditions under 8 U.S.C. 1182(n). The promise not to displace a US worker 90 days before or after a petition, in 20 CFR 655.738, binds only "H-1B dependent" employers and willful violators. Dependent means H-1B workers are at least 15% of a 51-plus workforce, per 655.736. Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta are nowhere near it, and even dependent employers are exempt for workers paid $60,000 or more, per 655.737.

So the rule Congress wrote in 1998 to stop layoff-and-replace never touched the companies doing the biggest cuts of 2026. The enforcement record shows it: the Justice Department's Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative has announced settlements with firms like Instacart ($5 million) and Cloudera ($2 million) in 2026, and the Labor Department debarred six willful H-1B violators since May 2025. None is a company on our layoff list. Our bet: the September order is the first tool in years that can reach them, and the agencies now have to show they will use it.

What this means for you

• If you were laid off: look up your former employer in our LCA table and the USCIS hub. If a certified LCA lists your old job title, city and wage, you can file a complaint with the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division (form WH-4) or the Justice Department's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section, which the order now directs to look at layoffs.
• Reporters: file records requests with DOL Wage and Hour for any reviews opened under the September 23 order, and ask each company on this list one question: did any H-1B position certified in your layoff month replace a role you cut?
• Builders and recruiters: every row here is a free CSV. The LCA files name the job, the wage and the city: a live map of where these companies are still hiring.

We track these filings for you every week: Company Watch follows any company's federal contracts, lobbying and SEC filings for $99 a month and flags changes as they land; we keep fixing it at no extra cost until it does what it promises. More of our data work on the AI industry, the AI layoff lobbying piece, and the newsroom.

How we got the data

• USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub (FY2026 export, FY2025 export, pulled Oct 29 2026). Full "H1B Public" CSV per year; summed "New Employment Approval" and initial approvals by petitioner name, grouping each company's US entities (names in the CSV). FY2026 covers Oct 1 2025 to Jun 30 2026 only, so comparisons with full FY2025 understate FY2026. Approvals count petitions, not people. File: data.csv, uscis-hub.csv.
• DOL OFLC LCA disclosure data (index; FY2026 Q3 cumulative file; FY2025 Q1 to Q4 files as baseline). CASE_STATUS = Certified only; one row per case number; employers matched by name prefix, so subsidiaries with other names are missed and counts are floors. Positions are the employer's declared ceiling, not hires. October 2025 is nearly empty because of the federal shutdown. File: lca-by-employer.csv.
• WARN notices: Washington ESD (searched per company), California EDD report plus current spreadsheet, Texas TWC 2026; notices dated Jan 1 to Oct 28 2026, de-duplicated by company, date and count. 3,855 of Amazon's California workers are at retail-type sites; they stay in the file and are marked. New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, Illinois, Georgia and North Carolina not yet pulled. Files: warn.csv, warn-same-month-state.csv (the 28 pairs).
• Lobbying (Senate LDA API, issue code IMM, 2025 to 2026 Q3, 190 filings, amendments de-duplicated). We count reports whose text names H-1B; each report's dollar amount covers all its issues, so we do not total "H-1B lobbying." File: lobbying.csv.
• SEC filings (EDGAR full-text search, 10-K and 10-Q, Oct 1 2025 to Oct 28 2026, plus each company's latest filings). File: sec-mentions.csv.
• Enforcement: Justice Department IER press releases and the DOL H-1B debarment list. A settlement is a hiring-discrimination finding, not an H-1B ban. File: enforcement.csv.

Sources

• Federal Register, H-1B program integrity order, Sep 23 2026
• USCIS, H-1B Employer Data Hub, pulled Oct 29 2026
• US Department of Labor OFLC, LCA disclosure data, pulled Oct 29 2026
• California EDD, WARN report, pulled Oct 29 2026
• Washington ESD, WARN database, pulled Oct 29 2026
• Meta 10-Q, Oct 22 2026; Amazon 10-K, Feb 6 2026; Oracle 10-K, Jun 22 2026
• Congress.gov, S. 2928, checked Oct 29 2026
• 20 CFR 655.738, checked Oct 29 2026