In this posting I describe where F1 visa (student visa) workers work and the shape of this workforce. About 425,000 active students or recent graduates have temporary work authorization through three program: OPT, OPT-STEM, and CPT. (I am incorporating two other study-related visas, M-1 and J-1, into these figures.)

Summary: These workers have proven attractive to large, mostly IT firms. Google and Meta employ domestically about 130,000 persons or 2% of the entire “tech” workforce. They employ 3% of the most advanced form of student vias-related workforce (OPT-STEM). Amazon employs about 1% of the American workforce, but 7% of the OPT-STEM workforce.

What do these workers offer that might be special and worth a sustain recruitment program?  Commitment to stay the course (ether one or three years) and not leave early. Commitment to work hard, if the worker wants to increase their chance for a H-1B designation, which would naturally be a target. 

All of these workers are in the SEVIS databases. This database was created post 9/11. About 1.6 million individuals are active on SEVIS.  The Trump administration plays fast and loose with trying to deport persons, and SEVIS was used earlier in 2025 to attempt to cancel some 4,000 student visas. (Mostly failed.) SEVIS and other DHS databases are not designed and maintained to be reliable for all purposes.  Any one who has tried to use a government database even slightly off from its routine use knows how limited and unreliable these databases are.

In 2024, Walmart is recorded in SEVIS as employing 2,091 OPT and OPT-STEM workers. With 1.6 million U.S. domestic employees, Walmart’s domestic workforce is larger than the combined domestic workforces of Amazon, Meta and Google. But 17,400 of OPT and OPT-STEM workers were employed by Amazon, Meta and Google.

The role of large IT firms in the student visa workforce grows as the students emerge from study and enter the entire workforce. This is predictable: as students become more part of the entire workforce, large employers will be increasingly skilled at recruiting a larger share.

The CPT workforce is aligned with work study programs.  There are 130,000 international students in this program. Amazon, Meta and Google employ less than 5,000 (4%) and the top ten employers account for 9,800, or 8% of the total.

The OPT workforce is for 12 months post graduation, and is 195,000 in size. These three giant IT firms employ 7,600 of them (4%) and the top ten employers account for 8%.

The OPT-STEM workforce is, of course, STEM restricted in higher education major, total workers being 95,000. It allow for three years of employment. The three giant IT firms employ 9,800, or 10%, and the top 10 employers hire 17%.  Among the top ten are Goldman Sacks, Walmart and Tesla. It comes clear that a relative handful of large employers are practiced in the recruitment of these workers. there are about 6.6 million “tech” workers in the U.S. Meta and Google employ about

Again, what do these workers offer that might be special?  Commitment to stay the course (ether one or three years) and not leave early. Commitment to work hard, if the worker wants to increase their chance for a H-1B designation, which would naturally be a target.