Trump's H1B visa changes: Is Goldman Sachs the most exposed investment bank?

It's a new world for H1B visa holders under the Trump administration. The president notably added a $100k fee for new visa submissions, and more changes like increased weighting to higher paying jobs may be incoming. It's all set to impact the major US investment banks, who recruit thousands of H1B visa employees, but some banks may be impacted more than others.

Banks can usually afford to apply for large numbers of H1Bs in the knowledge that, should they lose the lottery, they can simply be employed in their home country, which is most often India. Last month, Bloomberg reported Indian headcounts for six major US banks, but it didn't reveal how large the H1B contingent at those respective banks was. We've provided a rough estimate by looking at total submissions by each bank on the H1B visa salary database over the past three years (the amount of time H1Bs lasts before they need to be renewed). While H1B headcount is usually tiny compared to Indian headcount, Goldman Sachs is a notable exception.

Data from the H1B Visa salary database suggests that Goldman Sachs has filed for over 6,000 H1Bs in the past three years. We reached out to the bank to confirm the accuracy of these figures, but it did not respond to a request for comment. Goldman is the second-biggest bank for H1B hiring behind JPMorgan, which the H1B Visa salary database says filed for 8,628 H1Bs in that same period.

For most other banks, H1B filings are equivalent to 10-15% of their Indian headcounts. The lowest proportion of H1Bs to Indian employees is at Bank of America, where its 2,358 H1B filings are equivalent to just 8.1% of its India headcount. Goldman has ~8,000 Indian employees, making its H1B contingent equivalent to more than 75% of its Indian global capacity centre (GCC) headcount.

If we assume the majority of these H1Bs are from India, Goldman Sachs has a conundrum. It will now have to cough up the extra $100k whenever it hires, or expand its Indian GCC to more affordably employ the talent it was once hiring on H1Bs. Neither plan is cheap.

There are, of course, caveats. The other banks have much heftier consumer businesses that inflate their headcounts, which may make the problem look more severe than it is. H1B visas are also meant to be for roles that need to be based in the US; while that's a contentious subject, many of the roles Goldman is hiring on H1Bs may be impossible to outsource. 

Another important note is that Goldman hires significantly more juniors on H1Bs than other banks. In the three-year period to December 2025, H1B Visa salary database data says Goldman hired 1589 analysts on H1Bs; the next closest bank was BofA with 137. This matters because the $100k fee does not apply to international students converting from an F-1 student visa into an H1B visa; if these are graduate hires, Goldman's recruitment practices may be unharmed, for now.

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