Month: September 2025

• Wall Street is bracing for the impact of President Trump’s H-1B application fee.
• The $100,000 price tag could upend hiring for technologists and junior bankers.
• Experts broke down which finance jobs are most at risk and why.

President Donald Trump’s new H-1B visa policy may hit Big Tech the hardest, but Wall Street is well within the blast zone.

Big banks like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citi have long used these work visas to hire a range of highly skilled overseas workers, from junior bankers to technologists and even risk managers and traders.

Trump’s late Friday executive order, which raised the application fee to $100,000 each, is expected to upend this hiring process in a way that could make it a lot harder for international students to get a leg up in finance — and potentially lead more financial firms to outsource their technology needs, experts said.

“If the $100,000 fee is indeed implemented, I would expect demand for H-1Bs would shrink to just the most highly compensated, hardest-to-fill roles,” said Ted Chiappari, head of Duane Morris’ immigration law group.

Chiappari pointed to junior-level bankers, like analysts, who he said are common recipients of financial industry H-1B visas. Computer-related jobs are also a big source of the finance industry’s H-1B hiring, making up about two-thirds of applications last year, according to a recent report from JPMorgan. The firm predicted the policy change could result in 5,500 fewer work authorizations being granted every month.

“If I were a hiring manager and the choice was between candidate A and candidate B, and let’s say I liked candidate A a little bit better but he had a $100,000 price tag on him — I’d have to like him a lot better,” said Meridith Dennes, founder of Prospect Rock Partners, a Wall Street recruiting firm.

A career-altering fee

For young people, the new visa fee could alter their entire career path. Breaking into finance — whether in hedge funds or investment banking — is a complex process that often begins in college, if not earlier.

If the new H-1B fee prompts some banks to avoid hiring international students to fill their entry-level ranks, US universities may see fewer students from other countries pursuing this track or attending at all.

“I think it’s going to make it that much less attractive to come to the United States,” Chiappari said.

Junior bankers earning roughly $185,000 or so, including bonuses, might not justify the $100,000 visa sponsorship expense.

“The question everyone is considering is, what’s the cut-off point? A million-dollar VP?” said an associate at a large private equity firm.

This person said that an associate earning under $400,000 might not warrant the added expense, but higher-level employees with bigger salaries and revenue-generating potential could.

Dennes said she would be “really freaked out” if she were an international student.

“One of the reasons why you study in the United States is to secure a job in the United States,” she said, adding, “Now nobody wants to hire you because you have a $100,000 price tag on your head.”

‘Offshore and outsource’

The visa application fee is expected to drive more hiring of American tech talent— but only to a point, Dennes said. Many US financial firms like Goldman Sachs have established software and tech hubs in countries like India, which could see more hiring to make up for workers who would have previously come to the US on H-1 B visas.

“If it gets too hard to do business in the US,” Chiappari said, “they’ll just offshore and outsource.”

Not all tech jobs will be so easily expendable. Some tech jobs can be expensive and hard to fill, which has led some financial firms to offer generous pay packages to compete with tech firms and the rest of the economy.

The industry’s higher salaries could play to its advantage in the H-1B lottery, said Bo Cooper, a partner at immigration-focused law firm Fragomen, who noted that certain industries, companies, or roles could be exempted from the $100,000 fee at the president’s discretion.

On Tuesday, the administration proposed a change to the H-1B lottery that “would give boosted chances in the lottery to those H-1B candidates who would receive the highest wages,” Cooper said.

While the real impact for Wall Street may not be entirely visible until bonus season rolls around, in some cases, it’s already happening. An executive at a small multistrategy hedge fund told Business Insider that his firm has decided against hiring a portfolio manager from a foreign country because of the fee.

The executive said firms with deep pockets are more likely to eat the added cost of the fee, saying, “This is a rounding error in their recruiting expenses.”

• US employers hiring foreign skilled workers must now pay a $100,000 application fee.
• The price hike adds pressure to consulting firms’ already fragile talent strategies.
• The changes will boost competition for expertise and accelerate offshoring, analysts told Business Insider.

Consulting firms may be less outspoken than tech CEOs, but they’re staring down the same staffing problem as Silicon Valley after President Donald Trump introduced a $100,000 H-1B application fee last Friday.

The H-1B program temporarily allows employers to hire foreign skilled workers for specialized jobs.

The Department of Labor reports that nearly 50% of H-1B applications are related to “professional, scientific, and technical services” — with professional services typically referring to the consulting and accounting work carried out by firms like Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC.

James Ransome, a partner and strategy consulting lead at Patrick Morgan — a firm focused on executive recruitment and industry analysis — said that Friday’s executive order had raised concern over talent acquisition among consulting leaders.

“For many firms, the H-1B route has been a steady pipeline for mid-level consultants with strong technical and analytical skills, roles that are difficult to fill at scale in the US domestic market. Leaders are concerned this change adds further friction at a time when competition for talent is already high,” said Ransome.

According to the US government’s H-1B employer data hub, Deloitte, EY, and Accenture are the professional services firms that hire the most employees with H-1B visas.

In the last three years up to April 2025, Deloitte hired 7,535 workers on H-1B visas, making it the eleventh largest US employer of H-1B visa holders. The number represents roughly 1% of its most recently reported US head count.

At Accenture and EY, H-1B visa holders hired in the last three years — 5,862 and 5,298, respectively — represent almost 10% of each firm’s last reported US headcounts of around 60,000. The data does not reflect how many remain employed by the firms.

Deloitte, EY, and Accenture did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Ransome said he expected the Big Four and top-tier firms to absorb some of the higher costs of the visas to maintain staffing continuity. But they would likely take a “dual approach” and shift their staffing models alongside any cost absorption, he said.

Smaller players in the consulting industry will need to up their ability to attract domestic talent, especially mid-level hires, he added.

Competition over tech talent has become a defining pressure point for consulting firms as they race to develop the strongest AI offering for clients, and the H-1B executive order will add to that pressure.

Consulting firms competing for data scientists and other highly technical specialists will feel the competition increase, Tom Rodenhauser, a consulting analyst and the managing partner at Kennedy Intelligence, told Business Insider.

Accelerating offshoring

The two experts told BI that Trump’s executive order is also likely to make offshoring hubs more attractive to firms.

“Consulting is mobile in the sense that individuals don’t need to be based in the US to serve customers,” said Rodenhauser. Firms can simply relocate resources to bypass the disruption caused by the visa situation, he said.

For years, top firms have used labor arbitrage to bolster their revenue streams, setting up nearshore and offshore centers in countries like India, Mexico, Argentina, and the Philippines.

The reliance on foreign hubs has increased as technical capabilities within offshore centers have improved, and AI has reduced the demand for junior workers in US offices.

In August, BI obtained part of an internal presentation showing that PwC US planned to cut graduate hiring by a third over the next three years. One of the three reasons the firm gave in the presentation was “further AC integration,” referring to PwC’s acceleration centers, its name for its offshore hubs.

Ransome said consultancies have already been reassessing the balance between onshore client-facing teams and offshore delivery hubs, and the potential changes around H-1B visas would accelerate those strategies.

“Rather than simply paying more across the board, they’ll use this moment to rethink leverage models: higher-value, client-facing work anchored onshore, with more delivery capability shifted offshore.”

Nearshore hubs, like those in Canada, would start looking more attractive. Toronto, given its proximity to New York and Chicago, would be particularly appealing, Ransome said.

For midsize firms, without the infrastructure or scale to rely on foreign hubs, the H-1B price hike will be more disruptive, he said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pthompson@businessinsider.com or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.