IBM’s new-employment H-1B approvals fell from 1,348 in fiscal 2024 to 501 in fiscal 2025, a 63% drop, according to USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub figures compiled by Immigration Analytics (https://immigration-analytics.com/2026/11/10/ibm-visa-sponsorship/). IBM has now turned that decline into stated policy. The company has stopped sponsoring H-1B visas and green cards for “a majority of roles” in IBM Consulting, as Business Insider reported, citing a Bloomberg story first. Consulting is IBM’s biggest division, with more than 150,000 of the 264,300 employees IBM counted at its wholly owned operations worldwide at the end of 2025, per its 2025 annual report.
“IBM Consulting participates in U.S. high-skilled visa programs to address skill shortages,” an IBM spokesperson said in the statement Business Insider published. “That participation has been declining for a number of years and as skill availability and client need have evolved, we have opted to discontinue visa and green card sponsorship for the majority of such roles in IBM Consulting.”
Two programs, one freeze
H-1B is a temporary work status: an employer petitions USCIS for a worker in a “specialty occupation,” the grant runs three years and is renewable once to six, and the worker’s legal status in the country depends on staying employed by that sponsor. It does not lead to a green card by itself. That requires PERM, the Labor Department’s Program Electronic Review Management system, which is the first of three steps: the employer gets a labor certification showing no qualified American was available for the role, then files an I-140 petition with USCIS, then the worker files for the final green card (I-485). IBM’s move shuts off both the temporary-status pipeline and the permanent one for most consulting hires at once.
| New-employment approvals (approvals) | |
|---|---|
| FY2023 | 979 |
| FY2024 | 1,348 |
| FY2025 | 501 |
Source: USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, via Immigration Analytics
Those figures count only new hires, not renewals of workers IBM already employs. On that broader measure, which includes extensions and status changes for existing staff, Business Insider’s review of federal records put IBM’s total approved H-1B petitions at just over 1,600 in fiscal 2026 and over 2,000 in fiscal 2025, down from nearly 3,000 in fiscal 2024. Either way the direction is the same, and the new-hire collapse happened before IBM announced it was stopping sponsorship altogether — the policy formalizes a retreat already under way inside the data.
A freeze written in Washington first
IBM is not under direct government order here, unlike eight companies the Trump administration suspended from PERM outright on October 8. Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and Capgemini would no longer have new PERM applications processed, citing “multiple active federal investigations.” Vance singled out Microsoft, saying it laid off about 6,000 US workers in the prior year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards — “no company in the United States,” he said, had abused the system more. Microsoft’s own count of roughly 6,000 H-1B filings put 80% of them as extensions or status changes for existing employees, not new hires, the company said.
Vance’s framing had holes CNBC’s review of the visa data found: he offered no evidence tying Microsoft’s layoffs to its foreign hiring, he merged H-1B and green-card counts that run through separate legal processes, and Amazon — which brought in nearly four times as many new H-1B hires as Microsoft that year — was left off the suspension list entirely. The eight-company suspension also swept up Adobe and the major IT outsourcers, none of which has disclosed internal hiring data to rebut the administration’s figures the way Microsoft did.
A separate Trump policy, the $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions announced in September 2025, is not currently in force, which updates the record on it: a Massachusetts federal court vacated the first version of the fee on June 8, 2026, and the First Circuit declined to stay that ruling on appeal. A second proclamation extended the fee through September 2027, but the Northern District of California blocked that version too on September 30, ruling the administration needed to run the change through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking rather than impose it by proclamation. As of November 9, 2026, no employer — IBM included — owes the $100,000 on a new H-1B petition, and a DHS proposal to charge $103,265 by regulation instead has not cleared its public-comment period.
IBM has not said which consulting roles keep sponsorship, whether staff already partway through a PERM green-card case are grandfathered, or how many of its 150,000-plus consulting employees currently hold H-1B status. The only disclosed choice for people affected, from the internal document Bloomberg saw, is to move to a role outside the United States or leave the company by the end of the year. The next figure that will say whether “majority of roles” meant a trim or an exit from the visa pipeline altogether is IBM’s PERM and H-1B filing count for fiscal 2027, due in the Labor Department’s quarterly disclosures.