Which job postings sponsor visas? What 34,972 live US postings say (October 2026)

The short answer

Most US job postings do not mention visas at all. Of 34,972 postings we read, 95.0% are silent, 4.6% refuse sponsorship in so many words, and 0.3% say they sponsor.

That 0.3% is small because companies that sponsor routinely do not advertise it in each posting. It is not evidence that 99.7% of employers will say no. It does mean that an explicit "we sponsor" sentence is rare and worth acting on, while a refusal is a clear stop sign: save your time for the other postings.

Of the 1,625 refusals, 377 are citizenship requirements (typically defense and government work), and the rest are explicit sentences about visa sponsorship.

How we counted

Source. OfferMagnet crawls company careers pages (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Workday, SmartRecruiters and others) every day. On 21 October 2026 our database held 81,463 postings worldwide, each fetched between 28 September and 21 October 2026. We kept the 34,972 whose location resolves to the United States, from 1,416 companies.

Method. For each posting we read the full description text and applied fixed pattern rules. Refusals win over offers, so a posting that says both counts as refusing. A posting counts as "refuses" if it contains a phrase such as not eligible for sponsorship, unable to sponsor, no visa sponsorship, authorized to work without sponsorship now or in the future, or US citizenship required. It counts as "sponsors" only if it contains an affirmative phrase such as "visa sponsorship is available" or "we sponsor visas". Everything else is silent.

What does not count. A mention of relocation, a bare mention of H-1B, a security-clearance requirement or a plain "must be authorized to work in the US" line is not a statement about sponsorship, so none of them counts either way. We read random samples of 25 "sponsors" and 25 "refuses" matches by eye and they were correct. Some "sponsors" postings are conditional ("may be available", "limited"); we count them as sponsors.

Limits. Silent does not mean no. Our stored descriptions stop at 4,000 characters, and the equal-opportunity and sponsorship boilerplate often sits at the bottom of long postings, so some sentences are cut off. 10,074 of the 34,972 US postings (29%) have almost no stored description (under 200 characters), and they can only be silent. Among the 24,898 postings with a full description, the split is 0.4% sponsor, 6.5% refuse, 93.0% silent. One company can post the same role in many cities, so these are postings, not distinct jobs, and the data covers the companies we crawl, not the whole US market.

Which companies say it: the numbers

Only 24 of the 1,416 US companies have at least one posting that says it sponsors, and 8 have three or more. Here they are, with the number of their US postings in our data.

These are mostly small and fast-growing companies writing the sentence into the posting or the benefits list. Large employers rarely do. The ones that most often write a refusal are the opposite: 143 companies have at least one refusing posting.

Most refusals come from a few big employers

A refusal in the text of one posting is the company's policy for that role, not a verdict on the whole company, and Clera shows it: 33 of its postings offer sponsorship while 55 say it is not available.

By job family

We grouped postings by title keywords, first match wins, in this order: machine learning, AI and data science; data and analytics; engineering and software; product and design; everything else.

Engineering and ML postings are a little more likely to offer sponsorship, but all families are under 1%. The gap between families is smaller than the gap between companies.

The exact phrases

These are the sentences we see most, quoted from real postings. Among the 1,625 refusals, the wording breaks down roughly like this (a rough count, assigned by the main phrase in each posting):

On the other side, the 111 sponsoring postings use sentences like these: "Visa sponsorship is available." (38), "We sponsor visas." or "We are happy to sponsor international candidates." (33), and benefit-list lines such as "Visa & permanent residence sponsorship" or "Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas". Four name O-1 and two name H-1B. Hedged versions exist too: "Limited immigration sponsorship may be available" and "may provide visa sponsorship for certain positions" tell you it depends on the role.

Two phrases look like refusals but are not. "Must be authorized to work in the United States" only asks for work authorization; it does not say whether the company will sponsor, so we count it as silent. A security clearance line (Secret, Top Secret) usually implies citizenship, but unless the posting says so, we do not count it.

What to do when the posting is silent

• Look at the company's history first. The US Department of Labor publishes every Labor Condition Application (LCA) employers file for H-1B workers. Search the employer on the DOL's LCA disclosure data, or on the sites that repackage it: MyVisaJobs and H1B Data. Recent filings for your job title are better evidence than any sentence in a posting.
• Ask early and plainly. One line to the recruiter: "Does the company sponsor H-1B or O-1 for this role?" A silent posting is often a yes with no one having written it down.
• Read the application form. Questions like "Will you now or in the future require sponsorship?" show up there, not in the posting. Answer them truthfully.
• Skip the explicit refusals. A posting that says no will not make an exception through the application form.

H-1B vs O-1 in four lines

• H-1B is for a "specialty occupation" that normally needs a bachelor's degree or equivalent. Your employer files the petition. New petitions are subject to an annual cap and a registration lottery, so a yes from the company is not a guarantee.
• O-1 is for people with extraordinary ability or achievement in fields such as science, business or the arts. It has no annual cap and no lottery, but you need strong evidence of achievement, and an employer or agent must file the petition.
• Both require the employer to act. Neither can be bought by the candidate.
• Rules, fees and processing times change: check the official pages for H-1B and O-1 at uscis.gov, not a blog post. This guide is not legal advice.

How OfferMagnet uses this

OfferMagnet reads the same text. On each job it quotes the sentence in the posting that decided the label, so you can check it yourself. Jobs that refuse to sponsor a visa you need go to the bottom of your list, with the reason shown. It costs $14.99 per month, with 3 days free.

Questions

Sources

• USCIS: H-1B specialty occupations
• USCIS: O-1 visa, individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement
• US Department of Labor: OFLC performance data (LCA disclosure)
• MyVisaJobs
• H1B Data

Guides

• AI job auto-apply tools compared (2026)