Ellis · June 2026
7.4 million jobs are open. The visa system is not built to fill them.
Ranked from BLS job openings against H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, and employment-based green cards. Where employers need people — and where the visa gate is capped, lottery-bound, or missing entirely.
Job openings
7.36M
Nonfarm, June 2026
Openings rate
4.4%
Share of jobs unfilled
H-1B annual cap
85,000
Vs. 344K registrations
H-2B asked, 1H
163K
Vs. 33K half-year cap
Nonfarm openings, recent months
thousands
Industries by worker need
Need index blends current openings rate, number of open jobs, and BLS 2024–34 projected growth. Tap a row for the visa path — or the missing one.
Agriculture (H-2A, not in JOLTS nonfarm)
JOLTS covers nonfarm payrolls, so farms do not show up in the ranking. The visa system treats them differently: H-2A has no annual cap. DOL certified 398,258 positions in FY2025 — a record — which is the closest public measure of unmet farm labor demand. H-2A uncapped.
Quality check
7.4M openings. 5.3M hires.7.1M unemployed.
Some vacancies are a missing workforce. Some are the same job turning over. The pool page scores each industry against hires, quits, layoffs, and the people last employed there.
Open the poolThe closed gate
Visas feed specialty jobs. Openings are in care, kitchens, and warehouses.
Where jobs are open
- Health care & social assistance1.35M
- Professional & business services1.30M
- Leisure & hospitality830K
- Retail774K
- Transportation & warehousing392K
Where visas actually go
- H-1B approvals: computer occupations~2/3
- H-1B cap, vs 344K registrations85K
- H-2B half-year cap, vs 163K asked33K
- H-2A farm jobs certified (uncapped)398K
- EB green cards, worldwide, per year140K
Home health aides are the occupation adding the most jobs through 2034 — about 740,000. They have no practical temporary-work visa. Software developers add the second-most, and still sit in an 85,000-person lottery, then a per-country green-card queue.
See visa caps and backlogsSources
Snapshot, not a live feed. JOLTS is preliminary for June 2026. Need index weights openings rate 42%, volume 33%, and 10-year projected growth 25%. Sector growth is blended where JOLTS industries are wider than a single NAICS sector.
BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
Table 1, seasonally adjusted job openings levels and rates by industry, June 2026 preliminary.
BLS JOLTS hires, quits, and layoffs
Tables 2, 4, and 5, seasonally adjusted flows by industry, June 2026 preliminary. Hires 5.35M, quits 3.23M, layoffs 1.77M.
BLS CPS household survey
Unemployed people 7.09M in June 2026 and 6.92M in July; unemployment rate 4.2% then 4.1%. Industry pool from table A-31, July 2026.
BLS unemployed by industry (A-31)
Experienced unemployed by last industry — the domestic pool that could, in principle, fill openings in that sector.
BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034
Industry and occupational projections, including fastest-growing occupations and occupations with the most job growth.
USCIS H-1B registration
FY2026 eligible registrations 343,981; 120,141 selected. Regular cap 65,000 + 20,000 master’s exemption.
DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification
H-2B assignment groups (162,603 positions requested for April 2026 start) and H-2A certification counts.
DHS/DOL H-2B supplemental cap, FY2026
64,716 additional H-2B visas authorized on top of the 66,000 statutory cap.
NFAP / USCIS employment-based inventory
Modeled India EB-2 wait and pending I-485 employment-based reports, 2026.
Want the occupation list? Fastest-growing jobs and visa fit.