JD Vance’s major announcement on Thursday put Tata Consultancy Services in the same action as Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Cognizant, and Capgemini, after the Trump administration froze PERM applications involving those companies. Tata Consultancy Services answered on Friday that the move would not alter its US hiring plan.
The company said it intends to hire an additional 15,000 people in the US over the next five years. It also said its workforce strategy in the US is anchored in hiring local talent, supported by a robust campus recruitment model.
JD Vance and Microsoft
JD Vance singled out Microsoft while announcing the action on Thursday. He said, “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” while accusing Microsoft of laying off American workers and replacing them with lower-paid foreign labor.
Microsoft replied that approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications it submitted in the last fiscal year included 80% that were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees. “Of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees. These were not to hire new people,” Microsoft said.
Tata Consultancy Services PERM use
Tata Consultancy Services said it had submitted only a single-digit number of applications through the Permanent Labor Certification process over the past two years. That is the gap in this freeze: the Trump administration moved against a visa-linked filing route that TCS said it used only sparingly.
Tata Consultancy Services said in a stock exchange filing on Friday, “Our workforce strategy in the US is anchored in hiring local talent, supported by a robust campus recruitment model,” and added, “As we had announced earlier, we intend to hire an additional 15,000 people in the US over the next five years, to further augment our local workforce.”
US hiring plans
Last March, Tata Consultancy Services said its North American workforce exceeded 46,000 people across 32 locations. At the end of September, Tata Consultancy Services reported having 598,056 employees globally. Those figures put Friday’s filing in context: the company’s US plan is part of a much larger staffing base, not a sudden shift caused by the PERM freeze.
For workers and managers watching the filing rules, the practical point is narrow but important: Tata Consultancy Services is saying its hiring pipeline in the US continues, even as the Trump administration tightens PERM access for a list of major technology companies. The specific duration of the freeze is not addressed in the filing, and the filing leaves the company’s stated US headcount target intact.
