Visa Sponsors Hiring Now (Nov 2026): 9,494 of 229,921 Registered Sponsors Have a Job Open

Seven governments publish who may hire from abroad. The Home Office keeps the UK register of licensed sponsors, Immigration New Zealand its list of accredited employers, Australia's Department of Home Affairs a list of accredited sponsors, the Dutch IND a public register of recognised sponsors, and Canada, the United States and Ireland publish the employers that received a Labour Market Impact Assessment, an H-1B approval or an employment permit. A name on one of these lists means the employer is allowed to sponsor a visa. It says nothing about whether the employer has a job open.

We matched each list against the jobs on our board. On 10 November 2026, 9,494 of the 229,921 registered employers across the seven countries had at least one job open, 4.1 per cent. The table gives each country's count; the notes under it say what each list contains and why the shares differ so much.

Registered sponsors with a job open, by country

Country	List	Employers on the list	With a job open	Share	Open jobs at them
United Kingdom	Register of licensed sponsors, Home Office, edition of 9 November 2026	126,538	3,957	3.1%	41,755
New Zealand	Accredited employers with current accreditation, Immigration New Zealand	28,516	1,997	7.0%	14,366
United States	Employers with an H-1B approval in FY2025 or FY2026, USCIS	25,160	978	3.9%	18,351
Canada	Employers with a positive LMIA in 2025 or 2026, ESDC	20,537	778	3.8%	7,157
Ireland	Companies issued employment permits in 2025 or 2026, DETE	12,595	777	6.2%	4,691
Netherlands	Public register of recognised sponsors, IND	13,010	208	1.6%	793
Australia	Accredited sponsors, Home Affairs, released under freedom of information in January 2025	3,565	799	22.4%	13,572

An employer is counted once, even where a list names it several times as branches or spelling variants, and rows we could not match to an employer record are left out of both columns. A job counts as open while its source still lists it, or for 60 days after posting when the source gives no end date, and only if our crawler saw it in the last 30 days.

What each list is, and what its share says

United Kingdom

The Home Office register lists every organisation that holds a sponsor licence, 126,538 of them in the edition of 9 November 2026, with its town, rating and route and nothing about hiring. A licence is held for years and used when a hire comes up, so the register is long and mostly quiet: 3,957 licensed sponsors, 3.1 per cent, had a job open on our board on 10 November 2026. Those employers account for 41,755 of the 45,926 UK jobs we list. Search the register on the UK licensed sponsor list, or look one employer up with the sponsor licence checker.

New Zealand

Immigration New Zealand accredits employers for the Accredited Employer Work Visa and publishes each one with an accreditation status and expiry date. We count the 28,516 employers whose accreditation is current. 1,997 of them, 7.0 per cent, had a job open, with 14,366 of the 19,420 New Zealand jobs on our board. The NZ accredited employer list on this site searches the register and shows which accredited employers are hiring by region and industry.

United States

The United States has no sponsor register. USCIS publishes H-1B approvals by employer and fiscal year, and we take the 25,160 employers with an approval in FY2025 or FY2026. 978 of them, 3.9 per cent, had a job open on our board, 18,351 jobs between them. An approval records one sponsorship in one fiscal year, so this list is a record of who sponsored, not a licence to sponsor again. Browse H-1B employers by state and sector.

Canada

Canada has no register either. Employment and Social Development Canada publishes the employers whose Labour Market Impact Assessment was positive, by quarter, and we take the 20,537 employers with a positive LMIA in 2025 or 2026. An LMIA approves named positions for a limited period, and an employer on last year's list may have filled them. 778 of these employers, 3.8 per cent, had a job open. Our board holds 16,490 open jobs in Canada, 7,157 of them at these LMIA employers; the rest come from job boards and employer sites and are not matched to an LMIA employer of these two years. The LMIA employer list is searchable by province and city.

Ireland

The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment publishes the companies issued employment permits each year, with the number of permits. We take the 12,595 companies with permits issued in 2025 or 2026. 777 of them, 6.2 per cent, had a job open, 4,691 of the 8,396 Irish jobs we list. Browse Irish employment permit holders by sector and region.

Netherlands

The IND register of recognised sponsors lists the 13,010 organisations allowed to bring in highly skilled migrants and other work-based residents. 208 of them, 1.6 per cent, had a job open on our board. This is the least complete of the seven counts: our Dutch job sources cover 883 open jobs, so a Dutch sponsor is far more likely than a British one to be hiring without our board seeing it. See recognised sponsors in the Netherlands.

Australia

Home Affairs grants accredited status to a subset of sponsors, among them government agencies, listed companies and businesses with a sponsorship history, and publishes no live list; ours is the 3,565 names it released under freedom of information in January 2025. The list holds the frequent sponsors and not every business that may sponsor, which is why its share is the highest of the seven: 799 employers, 22.4 per cent, with 13,572 open jobs. Standard business sponsors without accreditation are not in this count. The list of accredited sponsors in Australia is searchable here.

Why the shares are floors

We collect jobs from job boards and government job banks, not from every employer's own careers page, so a sponsor that advertises only on its own site counts here as not hiring. On 10 November 2026 our board held 149,423 open jobs from 14,807 employers across all countries, 102,712 of them posted in the last 30 days. The true share of registered sponsors with a vacancy is higher than the table shows, and the differences between countries come partly from what each list contains: Australia's list is a subset of frequent sponsors, the UK's is every licence holder.

How to use the lists

Start from the jobs, then check the list. The visa sponsorship jobs board holds the open jobs behind these counts, by country and profession. The lists are for the second step, checking that an employer can sponsor at all: the search box at the top of this page looks a name up on all seven lists, and each country's list page links to the employer pages, which show the register entry and the employer's open jobs together.

Method

Counted on 10 November 2026. The counts on this page are recalculated daily; the text around them was written on 3 November 2026. An employer is counted once per company, and list rows not matched to a company are excluded from both columns, so the shares are lower bounds. Jobs: the ApplyWave board, 149,423 open jobs from 14,807 employers. The lists:

• United Kingdom: the Home Office register of licensed sponsors, edition of 9 November 2026.
• New Zealand: Immigration New Zealand's accredited employers with current accreditation, checked on a rolling basis.
• United States: the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, FY2025 and FY2026.
• Canada: ESDC positive LMIA employer tables, 2025 and 2026.
• Ireland: employment permits issued by company, DETE, 2025 and 2026.
• Netherlands: the IND public register of recognised sponsors.
• Australia: the Department of Home Affairs accredited sponsor list released under freedom of information in January 2025 (FA 25/01/01229).