Home Depot H-1B filings draw scrutiny amid calls to hire Americans

Online scrutiny of Home Depot’s H-1B filings has put the retailer’s hiring mix under a brighter lens, especially for workers who want to know which jobs are being filled through sponsorship and which are being built from within. The company says it is the world’s largest home improvement retailer, with more than 2,000 stores and more than 400,000 associates in the United States.

Public labor disclosure data show Home Depot Management Company LLC filed 335 labor condition applications for H-1B visas in fiscal year 2025, along with 85 labor certifications for green cards. Separate public filings for Home Depot USA, Inc. show 161 H-1B labor condition applications from fiscal years 2020 through 2022. Those figures do not describe the company’s entire hiring operation, but they do show that immigration sponsorship remains part of Home Depot’s staffing strategy at the corporate level.

The roles tied to the filings were heavily technical. Public filing summaries for Home Depot USA, Inc. include software developers, operations research analysts, computer programmers, data scientists, business intelligence analysts and IT project managers. Atlanta was listed as the largest work location in the filing summary reviewed. For store associates and managers, that distinction matters: the public H-1B data point much more toward corporate and technology talent than toward the hourly staffing that keeps stores open, resets bays, loads customers and supports pro contractors during seasonal rushes.

The timing also lands in a more aggressive policy climate. The U.S. Department of Labor launched Project Firewall on September 19, 2025, saying the initiative was designed to protect the rights, wages and job opportunities of qualified American workers and hold employers accountable for H-1B abuse. Two days later, the U.S. State Department said a $100,000 payment requirement would apply to new H-1B petitions submitted after 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 21, 2025.

The retail sector is not standing still around the issue. Lowe’s Companies filed 163 H-1B labor applications in fiscal year 2026 in one public data summary, underscoring that large home improvement chains are drawing from the same visa system as they compete for technical talent. For Home Depot, the practical question for workers is less about headlines and more about how the company balances outside sponsorship with internal mobility, training pipelines and hard-to-fill roles that support a business spanning stores, supply chain operations and digital systems.