Walmart cuts H‑1B filings

Walmart’s use of the H-1B visa pipeline has dropped fast: Business Insider reports the retailer’s filings in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 were down by more than half from a year earlier after new federal rules made fresh sponsorship far costlier. That first quarter covers October through December 2025, which is exactly when the new fee regime hit. The change took effect on September 21, 2025, so companies filing after that date were making decisions under a very different price tag. The H-1B visa is the main route U.S. companies use to hire foreign professionals for jobs like software engineering, data science, and finance. Before an H-1B petition can be filed, the employer usually starts with a Labor Condition Application, which is the government form that shows the company plans to hire for a specific role at a specific wage. The shock was the fee. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says any new H-1B petition submitted after 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on September 21, 2025, must include a $100,000 payment, while renewals and petitions filed before that deadline were not covered. That turns a hiring tool into something closer to a capital expense. A company that once had to think in the low thousands of dollars per case now has to decide whether one new overseas hire is worth a six-figure check before salary, relocation, and legal work are even counted. Walmart is not a small user of the program. Reporting in Arkansas last year said the company employed more than 2,300 H-1B workers, largely in Bentonville and San Francisco, so even a partial retreat shows up quickly in the data. The federal government is also changing who gets picked. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said after the September 2025 proclamation that the Department of Homeland Security would move to prioritize higher-paid workers in the H-1B selection process instead of treating entries like a simple random drawing. That matters for a retailer with a big mix of roles. A system tilted toward the highest wage bands can favor a narrow slice of elite specialist jobs and make mid-range corporate hiring harder to justify, especially once each new petition carries a $100,000 entry fee. The pullback now looks broader than Walmart. Business Insider reported similar declines at large banks and large technology companies, while The New York Times said the administration’s September changes have effectively locked some employers out of the program altogether. The Department of Labor’s own disclosure system helps explain why this is showing up so quickly in headlines. Its quarterly files capture employer applications and decisions on labor attestations across the fiscal year, so when a big company suddenly files far fewer cases in October, November, and December, the slowdown becomes visible long before annual totals arrive. For Walmart, the immediate result is fewer new visa-based hires. For everyone else watching, the message is that the H-1B program in 2026 is no longer a routine recruiting channel for large employers; it is a slower, pricier bet that many of them are using much less.