Updated October 28, 2026

H-1B cap-exempt employers

Colleges and universities, the nonprofits tied to them, and research organizations hire H-1B workers outside the lottery. These are the employers whose wage requests tell DOL they're one of those.

Employers

2,252

Most of their wage requests say ACWIA covers them

Colleges and universities

1,184

Nonprofits affiliated with one

894

Research organizations

174

When they file, FY2025

These employers held 6.7% of the year's certified H-1B LCAs. Each month's share of each group's year, October 2024 to September 2025, by the month DOL certified them.

Everyone else's busiest three months, April to June, held 42% of their year: the lottery's winners file their petitions then. The cap-exempt employers' busiest three held 33%.

Cap-exempt employers

Oct 2024 Sep 2025

Cap-exempt employers' certified H-1B LCAs by month, FY2025, as a share of their year
Period	tenths of a percent of the year
October 2024	66
November 2024	59
December 2024	59
January 2025	65
February 2025	90
March 2025	110
April 2025	111
May 2025	111
June 2025	95
July 2025	96
August 2025	73
September 2025	65

Every other employer

Oct 2024 Sep 2025

Every other employer's certified H-1B LCAs by month, FY2025, as a share of their year
Period	tenths of a percent of the year
October 2024	67
November 2024	51
December 2024	60
January 2025	59
February 2025	73
March 2025	86
April 2025	119
May 2025	150
June 2025	148
July 2025	69
August 2025	58
September 2025	61

The busiest

By certified H-1B LCAs in FY2025. 1,542 of the 2,252 filed at least one.

1 Mayo Clinic

College or university, Minnesota, 276 H-1B approvals from USCIS
575
2 LELAND STANFORD JR, UNIVERSITY

College or university, California, 304 H-1B approvals from USCIS
529
3 University of Michigan

College or university, Michigan, 280 H-1B approvals from USCIS
480
4 The Washington University

College or university, Missouri
416
5 ST. JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL

Research organization, Tennessee, 201 H-1B approvals from USCIS
358
6 The University of Iowa

College or university, Iowa, 137 H-1B approvals from USCIS
324
7 TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

College or university, Pennsylvania
321
8 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

College or university, Florida, 179 H-1B approvals from USCIS
301
9 University of California, San Francisco

College or university, California, 210 H-1B approvals from USCIS
290
10 University of Pittsburgh

College or university, Pennsylvania, 143 H-1B approvals from USCIS
289
11 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Affiliated nonprofit, New York, 165 H-1B approvals from USCIS
281
12 Emory University

College or university, Georgia, 166 H-1B approvals from USCIS
270
13 Columbia University

College or university, New York, 148 H-1B approvals from USCIS
261
14 The University of Chicago

College or university, Illinois, 155 H-1B approvals from USCIS
255
15 Johns Hopkins University

College or university, Maryland, 174 H-1B approvals from USCIS
253
16 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Affiliated nonprofit, New York, 108 H-1B approvals from USCIS
244
17 General Hospital Corp

Affiliated nonprofit, Massachusetts, 141 H-1B approvals from USCIS
244
18 Texas A&M University

College or university, Texas, 108 H-1B approvals from USCIS
228
19 Purdue University

College or university, Indiana, 139 H-1B approvals from USCIS
227
20 Duke University

College or university, North Carolina, 82 H-1B approvals from USCIS
226
21 Northwestern University

College or university, Illinois, 152 H-1B approvals from USCIS
221
22 University of Minnesota

College or university, Minnesota, 150 H-1B approvals from USCIS
217
23 University of California, Los Angeles

College or university, California, 117 H-1B approvals from USCIS
214
24 University of Rochester

College or university, New York, 87 H-1B approvals from USCIS
213
25 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

College or university, New Jersey
212

The next 75

Cap-exempt employers ranked 26 to 100 by certified H-1B LCAs
Employer	Kind	State	LCAs
The Ohio State University	College or university	OH	206
Yale University	College or university	CT	203
University of Virginia	College or university	VA	202
The Trustees of Princeton University	College or university	NJ	201
HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM	Affiliated nonprofit	MI	197
The University of Alabama at Birmingham	College or university	AL	193
UT-Battelle, LLC / Oak Ridge National Laboratory	Research organization	TN	193
University of Southern California	College or university	CA	192
University of Utah	College or university	UT	192
Brigham and Women's Hospital	Affiliated nonprofit	MA	191
University of Washington	College or university	WA	184
Harvard University	College or university	MA	182
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY	College or university	CA	180
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI	College or university	FL	179
Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska	College or university	NE	177
The University of Texas at Austin	College or university	TX	176
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University	College or university	VA	175
DANAFARBER CANCER INSTITUTE	Affiliated nonprofit	MA	172
North Carolina State University	College or university	NC	170
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS M.D. ANDERSON CANCER CENTER	College or university	TX	168
Indiana University Indianapolis	College or university	IN	168
Cornell University	College or university	NY	168
New York University	College or university	NY	168
Arizona State University	College or university	AZ	167
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	College or university	MA	164
University of Illinois Chicago	College or university	IL	160
The Pennsylvania State University	College or university	PA	160
Adventist Health System/Sunbelt, Inc.	Affiliated nonprofit	FL	158
The Curators of the University of Missouri	College or university	MO	155
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory	Affiliated nonprofit	CA	154
National Institutes of Health, HHS	Research organization	MD	149
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences	College or university	AR	148
The Children's Hospital Corporation	Affiliated nonprofit	MA	148
Weill Cornell Medical College	College or university	NY	148
University of Illinois	College or university	IL	147
NYU Grossman School of Medicine	College or university	NY	146
University of Kentucky	College or university	KY	145
University of California, Davis	College or university	CA	145
Baylor College of Medicine	College or university	TX	144
Battelle Memorial Institute	Research organization	OH	142
Ochsner Clinic Foundation	Affiliated nonprofit	LA	141
ARUP Laboratories	Affiliated nonprofit	UT	141
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia	Affiliated nonprofit	PA	139
Oregon State University	College or university	OR	133
University of Colorado, Denver	College or university	CO	133
Cleveland Clinic Foundation	Affiliated nonprofit	OH	132
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO	College or university	CA	132
The Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund	College or university	LA	129
Trustees of Boston University	College or university	MA	127
Medical College of Wisconsin, Inc.	College or university	WI	126
The University of Tennessee	College or university	TN	125
West Virginia University	College or university	WV	124
The Florida State University	College or university	FL	121
Oregon Health and Science University	College or university	OR	120
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center	Affiliated nonprofit	OH	118
University of South Florida	College or university	FL	117
University of Maryland, College Park	College or university	MD	116
Fermi Forward Discovery Group, LLC	Research organization	IL	116
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Inc.	Affiliated nonprofit	MA	116
Michigan State University	College or university	MI	113
W.M. Rice University	College or university	TX	113
University of Arizona	College or university	AZ	111
Indiana University	College or university	IN	110
Mount Sinai Hospital	Affiliated nonprofit	NY	110
Carnegie Mellon University	College or university	PA	107
Indiana University Health Care Associates, Inc.	Affiliated nonprofit	IN	105
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Affiliated nonprofit	CA	104
Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC	Research organization	CO	102
UChicago Argonne, LLC	Affiliated nonprofit	IL	102
University of Colorado	College or university	CO	100
Case Western Reserve University	College or university	OH	100
Leland Stanford Jr. Univ/SLAC National Accelerator Lab	College or university	CA	98
University of Oklahoma	College or university	OK	97
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL	College or university	NC	94
Stanford Health Care	Affiliated nonprofit	CA	93

By state

The 15 states with the most of these employers' LCAs, of 54 with any.

California

164 employers
3,215
New York

186 employers
3,014
Massachusetts

126 employers
2,363
Texas

124 employers
2,179
Pennsylvania

136 employers
1,762
Florida

82 employers
1,609
Illinois

79 employers
1,582
Ohio

72 employers
1,248
Michigan

56 employers
1,109
Tennessee

35 employers
1,055
Minnesota

54 employers
994
Georgia

64 employers
929
Virginia

57 employers
924
Missouri

57 employers
917
North Carolina

43 employers
884

FAQs

Does this list prove an employer is cap-exempt?

No. It's the employer's own answer to DOL: on its wage requests it said the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act covers it, as a college or university, a nonprofit affiliated with one, or a research organization (20 CFR 656.40(e)). Those are the employers the H-1B cap leaves out (8 CFR 214.2(h)(8)(iii)(F)), but USCIS decides each petition.

Why does cap-exempt matter?

A cap-exempt employer can file an H-1B petition any time of year, with no lottery. If that job ends and the worker has never been counted against the cap, a move to an employer that is subject to it needs a lottery selection (8 CFR 214.2(h)(8)(iii)(F)(5)). Working for a cap-subject employer at the same time as the cap-exempt one doesn't count against the cap (paragraph (F)(6)).

Why isn't a university I know listed?

An employer is listed when most of its answered wage requests in DOL's files since October 2022 say ACWIA covers it. One that filed none, filed under a name this site can't tie to its page, or answered no isn't listed.

How the list is made

Every wage request (Form ETA-9141) asks whether ACWIA covers the employer and as which kind. An employer is listed when most of its answered requests in DOL's files say yes, with the kind it named most and the state most of those jobs were in. Each spelling of an employer's name counts on one page.

LCAs are certified H-1B LCAs (H-1B1 and E-3 left out) in fiscal year 2025, the newest finished one. USCIS's approvals are its Employer Data Hub for fiscal year 2026, shown only where USCIS's spelling of the employer reaches its page. These employers held 6.7% of all certified H-1B LCAs that year.

Wage determinations has not refreshed in 121 days. It should update quarterly, so the figures below are the last ones that arrived rather than the current ones. Source: DOL quarterly PW disclosure files (www.dol.gov) · data through Jun 30, 2026.

LCA disclosures has not refreshed in 121 days. It should update quarterly, so the figures below are the last ones that arrived rather than the current ones. Source: DOL quarterly LCA disclosure files (www.dol.gov) · data through Jun 30, 2026.

USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub: https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub · data through Jun 30, 2026 · quarterly

How these figures are counted. Spotted an error? Tell us; every fix is dated in the corrections log.

What each source includes

Wage determinations: Decided prevailing wage requests only, with the wage DOL determined. Pending requests are absent.

LCA disclosures: Certified and denied H-1B labor condition applications only, with the wage offered.

USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub: H-1B workers USCIS approved and denied per petitioner, by the fiscal year of its FIRST decision, from FY2009. Appeals, revocations and pending petitions are excluded, and the address is the petitioner's mailing address, not where the work is.

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