The Department of Labor has just released FY2026 Q3 data, and the E-3 visa data explorer has been refreshed to match. That gives us nine months of FY2026 to compare against the same point last year, plus a fresh quarter to check whether the trends from our Q1 analysis held up.
Some did. One reversed. And three of the biggest names in the data tell completely different stories depending on which window you look through, which is the most useful thing in this entire release.
Here’s what the Q3 numbers show.
The headline: volume up slightly, mix still moving
FY2026 through Q3 sits at 7,671 certified filings, against 7,329 at the same point in FY2025. That’s up 4.7%.
Quarter on quarter, it’s almost perfectly flat: 2,640 filings in Q3 versus 2,606 in Q2, a rise of 1.3%.
So the top line is calm. What’s underneath it isn’t.
What this means for the full year
FY2025 closed at 10,191 filings, and 7,329 of those had landed by the end of Q3. So Q4 historically carries a bit more weight than the other quarters.
Apply that same shape to FY2026 and the full year lands somewhere between 10,200 and 10,700 filings, most likely a little above FY2025.
One thing worth clearing up, because it comes up constantly: LCA filings are not the same as visas issued. An LCA is the paperwork an employer files with the Department of Labor before hiring, and plenty never convert into an actual visa. Real E-3 issuances have historically run at roughly half the filing count. The peak was near 5,800 in a year, against a cap of 10,500. The cap has never been reached since the visa was created in 2005, and nothing here suggests FY2026 will be the first.
E-3 visa trends Q3 2026: consulting is the growth story
The single clearest pattern this quarter is professional services firms scaling their Australian hiring hard.
| Company | FY2025 through Q3 | FY2026 through Q3 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deloitte | 10 | 31 | +210% |
| Ernst & Young | 51 | 86 | +68% |
| Accenture | 13 | 19 | +46% |
| The Siegfried Group | 5 | 11 | +120% |
Deloitte tripling is the standout. But Ernst & Young adding 35 filings on an already-large base is arguably more significant, because it’s much harder to grow from 51 than from 10.
Median wages in this group sit lower than the tech and legal cohorts. Deloitte’s median actually fell from $161,914 to $153,312, and Siegfried sits around $144,000. That’s consistent with consulting hiring at the analyst and manager end rather than exclusively senior.
If you’ve been targeting tech and getting nowhere, this is the cohort quietly opening up.
E-3 visa trends Q3 2026: Big Law is piling in
The law firms are the other clear growth cluster, and they’re paying the highest wages in the entire dataset.
| Firm | FY2025 through Q3 | FY2026 through Q3 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simpson Thacher & Bartlett | 7 | 12 | +71% |
| Davis Polk & Wardwell | 6 | 13 | +116% |
| Milbank | 6 | 13 | +116% |
Simpson Thacher shows up as one of only three findings confirmed in both comparison windows. It’s growing against last year and against last quarter. Their median wage also climbed from $329,285 to $344,166, and their average across FY2026 is up 18% year on year to $359,347.
Milbank’s median rose from $285,542 to $336,153. Davis Polk’s median fell from $397,500 to $312,307. On a base of 13 filings, that tells you more about role mix than about pay cuts.
The pattern from our Q1 piece holds: Big Law remains the highest-paying corner of the E-3 world, and it’s expanding.
E-3 visa trends Q3 2026: the AI labs keep climbing
The most dramatic finding from Q1 was AI labs scaling E-3 sponsorship faster than anyone. Nine months in, that’s still true.
OpenAI went from 6 filings at this point last year to 21, a 250% increase, and it’s one of the three findings confirmed in both windows. Median wage eased slightly from $320,416 to $304,714. On a tripled headcount, that’s what you’d expect as hiring broadens beyond the most senior roles.
Anthropic went from 5 filings in Q2 to 14 in Q3, up 180% quarter on quarter. Their median wage dropped sharply, from $364,420 to $273,133. Again, that points to a widening role mix rather than a pay cut.
Both companies now have enough filing history to be genuinely useful when you’re planning. The OpenAI E-3 page and Anthropic E-3 page have the full record.
The three companies that contradict themselves
This is the part I’d most want you to read, because getting it wrong would send you in exactly the wrong direction.
Three major employers show growth in one comparison window and decline in the other. Both figures are correct. They’re measuring different things.
| Company | Year on year (through Q3) | Quarter on quarter (Q2 to Q3) |
|---|---|---|
| Ernst & Young | Up 68% (51 to 86) | Down 75% (32 to 8) |
| Goldman Sachs | Up 127% (11 to 25) | Down 46% (15 to 8) |
| Tesla | Down 41% (70 to 41) | Up 50% (12 to 18) |
The year-on-year number is cumulative across nine months. The quarterly number is the most recent three. So Ernst & Young has had a strong year overall and a very quiet Q3. Goldman Sachs is well ahead of last year, but slowed sharply last quarter. Tesla is down substantially on the year but has picked back up.
If you’re planning a job search, the quarterly number is the more useful signal, because it tells you what’s happening now. If you’re assessing whether a company is a serious long-term sponsor, the annual number matters more.
The honest read on all three: EY and Goldman front-loaded their year, and Tesla is recovering from a weak start. Whether EY’s Q3 drop is a real slowdown or just filing timing won’t be clear until Q4 lands.
The sector paradox
Here’s a finding that looks contradictory until you unpack it.
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services fell from 39.1% of all filings in Q2 to 36.2% in Q3, a drop of 3.0 percentage points and 6% in raw count. It’s one of the three findings confirmed in both windows. That makes it a real structural shift, not noise.
But that’s the same sector bucket containing Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Accenture and every law firm above, all of which are growing.
The answer is that the bucket is enormous and the decline is coming from a different corner of it. IT services and staffing firms are contracting sharply:
- Cognizant Technology Solutions: 25 to 8 filings, down 68%
- Tekaccel: 36 to 13, down 63%
- FIS Management Services: 16 to 8, down 50%
Not all of them. Wipro grew from 9 to 13 and HCL Global Systems from 6 to 9. But the large IT outsourcing sponsors are pulling back faster than consulting and law are growing. The net effect is a sector losing share.
Worth knowing if you work in IT services: this is the corner of the E-3 market that’s genuinely tightening.
Australian firms in the data
Several Australian-owned companies are showing meaningful movement.
| Company | FY2025 through Q3 | FY2026 through Q3 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westpac Banking | 8 | 12 | +50% |
| Atlassian | 9 | 13 | +44% |
| Quantium | 8 | 12 | +50% |
| Woodside Energy USA Services | 5 | 8 | +60% |
Atlassian’s median wage climbed from $193,681 to $221,538. Quantium’s fell from $271,013 to $168,063. On twelve filings, that reflects a change in what they’re hiring for rather than anything about pay.
On the wage side, three Australian institutions show sharp increases in average pay:
- Australia and New Zealand Banking Group: up 32%, to $275,768
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia: up 21%, to $188,485
- Rokt: up 44%, to $207,351
Rokt’s is the most striking. Same filing count as last year, 16 both times, but average pay up 44%. That’s a shift in the seniority of who they’re bringing over, not a volume story.
The broader pattern from Q1 holds. Australian financial services and technology firms are steadily using the E-3 to move their own talent into the US, rather than only US firms hiring Australians inbound.
Where wages moved most
Beyond the Australian firms, the biggest average wage increases came from an unexpected corner: regional aviation.
- GoJet Airlines: up 21%, to $344,298
- SkyWest Airlines: up 22%, to $275,385
- Salesforce: up 22%, to $242,378
- Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: up 18%, to $359,347
Pilot wages at GoJet and SkyWest now sit alongside Big Law. Both airlines also filed fewer LCAs than last year, with SkyWest dropping from 36 to 24. That suggests fewer hires at higher seniority rather than an expanding program.
The declines worth knowing about
Beyond the IT services contraction above:
- Tesla: 70 to 41 year on year, down 41%, though up quarter on quarter
- Frontier Airlines: 18 to 10, down 44%
- Jacobs Engineering Group: 14 to 7, down 50%
- Bloomberg: 10 to 6, down 40%
- TBWA Worldwide: 11 to 5, down 54%
- Jetselect: 11 to 5, down 54%
Frontier and Jetselect are declining while SkyWest and GoJet raise wages sharply. That points to an aviation sector reshaping rather than simply shrinking.
How to read these numbers
A few things worth holding in mind before you make decisions off any of this.
Small bases move violently. A company going from 5 filings to 9 is an 80% increase and also four extra people. Percentages on small numbers are unstable and one additional filing swings them wildly. Always read the absolute counts alongside the percentage.
Median wage shifts on small samples usually mean role mix, not pay. Memorial Sloan Kettering’s median went from $189,396 to $107,944 across nine filings. That’s almost certainly a different mix of positions, not a pay cut. The same applies to Quantium, Superpower Health and University of California San Francisco, all of which show large wage swings on very small counts.
LCAs are intent, not outcome. An employer files an LCA before hiring. It signals genuine intent to hire, and it’s a legal filing rather than a job board listing. That makes it far more reliable than most hiring data. But it isn’t a person who arrived.
Two windows, two questions. Year on year tells you whether a company is a growing sponsor. Quarter on quarter tells you what they’re doing right now. When they disagree, as they do for Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs and Tesla, that disagreement is itself the finding.
Explore the data yourself
Everything here comes from the E-3 visa data explorer, which covers every E-3 LCA filing since FY2020. You can search by employer, role or state. Each has a dedicated page with full filing history, wage distribution and year-on-year trends.
The database refreshes within a few weeks of each Department of Labor release. Q4 data, which will close out FY2026, is due after the September quarter.
E-3 visa trends Q3 2026 FAQs
7,671 certified LCA filings through the end of Q3 FY2026, against 7,329 at the same point in FY2025, an increase of 4.7%. The full year is likely to land between 10,200 and 10,700 filings, a little above FY2025’s 10,191.
No. The 10,500 annual cap applies to visas issued, not LCA filings, and actual issuances have historically run at around half the filing count, peaking near 5,800 in a year. The cap has never been reached since the E-3 was created in 2005.
OpenAI leads with a 250% increase, from 6 filings to 21 year on year. Deloitte is up 210% (10 to 31), Doordash 200% (6 to 18), Bechtel 170% (10 to 27), and Anthropic 180% quarter on quarter (5 to 14). Davis Polk and Milbank have both grown 116%.
Yes, and it’s the strongest growth cluster in the Q3 data. Deloitte grew 210% year on year, Ernst & Young 68%, Accenture 46% and The Siegfried Group 120%. Median wages in consulting sit lower than tech and law, generally between $144,000 and $196,000.
Law firms lead. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett averages $359,347, up 18% year on year, with a Q3 median of $344,166. Milbank’s median is $336,153 and Davis Polk’s $312,307. GoJet Airlines averages $344,298 for pilots, and OpenAI’s median is $304,714.
Westpac Banking (12 filings through Q3, up 50%), Atlassian (13, up 44%), Quantium (12, up 50%) and Woodside Energy USA Services (8, up 60%) are all growing. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ and Rokt all show sharp average wage increases, with Rokt up 44%.
Because the two comparison windows measure different periods. Year on year compares nine months of FY2026 against the same nine months of FY2025. Quarter on quarter compares only Q3 against Q2. Ernst & Young is up 68% on the year but down 75% in Q3. That’s a strong year with a quiet recent quarter. Goldman Sachs shows the same pattern, and Tesla shows the reverse.
IT services and staffing are contracting fastest. Cognizant fell 68% (25 to 8), Tekaccel 63% (36 to 13) and FIS Management Services 50% (16 to 8). Professional, Scientific and Technical Services lost 3.0 percentage points of share between Q2 and Q3. That was driven mainly by this group rather than by consulting or law.
US Department of Labor Office of Foreign Labor Certification public LCA disclosure files. These are legal filings made by employers before hiring. That makes them a far more reliable signal of hiring intent than job board listings. DOL publishes quarterly and the America Josh database refreshes within weeks of each release.
This article uses LCA filing data from US Department of Labor OFLC public disclosure files, covering FY2026 through Q3. LCA filings indicate employer intent to hire and are not the same as visas issued. Percentage changes on small filing counts are volatile and should be read alongside absolute numbers.
