H-1b Visa Shock: Trump’s Crackdown Splits Wall Street Winners and Losers
The first quarter of fiscal year 2026 exposed a clear break in the market for h-1b visa hiring: the biggest financial firms filed 25% fewer certified applications than a year earlier, even as some rivals moved in the opposite direction. That split is the first hard evidence of how President Donald Trump’s changes are reshaping the program inside major banks.
What changed first in the h-1b visa data?
Verified fact: Department of Labor data shows the financial firms that filed the most certified H-1B applications in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 submitted 10% fewer filings than in the same period the year before. The federal fiscal year’s first quarter runs from October through December.
Among 20 of the biggest users of the program in that quarter, the firms filed 25% fewer certified applications year over year. JPMorgan Chase recorded the steepest decline in raw volume among the named firms, falling from 724 certified applications from October through December 2024 to 516 a year later, a drop of nearly 29%. That change moved it from the biggest financial user of the program in the first quarter of last fiscal year to the second biggest in the same quarter of this fiscal year.
Informed analysis: These numbers suggest that the cost and uncertainty attached to the program are already influencing filing behavior before the next full annual totals are visible. The data do not show approvals, lottery outcomes, or actual hiring, but they do show how aggressively firms chose to enter the system during the quarter.
Why did Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan fall while Citi rose?
The contrast is sharper because not every large employer moved the same way. Goldman Sachs saw the largest percentage decline in the quarter, with filings falling more than 60% from 256 to 101. Its remaining filings include a mix of front-office financial roles and technical roles. JPMorgan Chase’s filings appear to be largely focused on tech roles.
At the same time, several large competitors increased filings year over year. Citi’s filings rose nearly 20%, Barclays’ filings rose by nearly two-thirds, and Morgan Stanley’s filings increased by more than a quarter. Citi and Barclays show a mix of financial and technical workers, while Morgan Stanley’s filings do not show the underlying job function. Capital One posted a more modest 4% year-over-year increase and filed for many data science- and machine-learning-oriented roles, including director-level roles in data engineering and data science, and a machine learning senior lead role.
Verified fact: These figures reflect Labor Department certifications, not final visa approvals or lottery selections. Multiple filings can correspond to a single worker.
What does Trump’s policy change mean for employers?
The administration’s changes include a $100, 000 fee unveiled late last September, social media vetting requirements, and a wage-based lottery system that gives the highest-paid applicants a better chance in the annual H-1B lottery. Immigration lawyers have said that constant policy shifts and uncertainty are causing employers to reassess their filings.
The timing matters. The H-1B lottery took place last month, and that is typically when the lion’s share of applications are filed. The filings now available are only a preliminary snapshot; the full impact of the policy may become clearer when those lottery-period filings are released. Annual totals could still shift based on hiring cycles or other factors.
In this reading, the market is not simply shrinking. It is stratifying. Firms with heavier exposure to technical hiring appear to be changing behavior differently from those with more mixed hiring needs. The filings suggest that the new costs and rules are not producing one uniform response across Wall Street.
Who is implicated, and what remains unanswered?
Named institutions: the Department of Labor, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Capital One, and the administration of President Donald Trump all appear in the record available now.
The firms named either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. That leaves a central question unresolved: whether the quarter’s decline reflects a temporary pause, a revised staffing strategy, or a broader retreat from the program under higher costs and tighter scrutiny.
Accountability analysis: The evidence now available shows that the policy is already affecting where filings rise and fall. It also shows that some employers are still willing to expand. Those two facts together point to a more selective labor market, not a simple shutdown. If the goal was to make the program more expensive and less predictable, the early data suggest that the pressure is being felt unevenly—and that unevenness may itself become the most important story.
What the public still does not know is how much of this shift will persist once the full lottery-driven filing cycle is complete. For now, the clearest takeaway is that h-1b visa hiring is no longer moving in one direction across the financial sector, and that split is likely to shape the next round of corporate and policy debate.
