Who employs the most OPT students (2024)

This is a different dataset from the rest of this section, and it is deliberately kept apart. Everywhere else on /h1b the numbers come from Department of Labor filings, which name the legal entity that filed — Amazon.com Services LLC and Amazon Web Services, Inc. are two different employers there, because they are two different employers. ICE publishes this list by brand: one row, “Amazon”.

So the rows here do not link to company pages. Matching “Amazon” to any one of the Amazon entities that file with DOL would mean choosing one arbitrarily and attaching a number that covers all of them, and splitting the number across them would mean inventing data. Neither is something we are willing to print, so the two datasets sit side by side and stay unjoined.

Students, not jobs, and not headcount. These are counts an employer reported to SEVP, and a student on the 24-month STEM extension is counted again in each year they are reported. The OPT and STEM OPT columns overlap: a student employed by the same employer under both programs is counted in each, which is why they can add up to more than the “Students” total rather than exactly to it.

Being on this list is not the same as sponsoring H-1B. OPT is work authorisation that comes with a student visa; an H-1B petition is a different filing an employer chooses to make later. Some of the largest employers of OPT students here — universities in particular — file comparatively few labour condition applications. To see who actually files, use the sponsor directory.

ICE publishes this irregularly — 2017, 2018, 2019, then 2024 — so a rank here is a snapshot of its year, not a current figure. Source: ICE SEVP, 2024_Top200_Employers_OPT_STEM_OPT_Students.pdf.