A new study released by Boston-based consultancy Cairn & Company reveals that international relocations of highly skilled professionals fell from 3.7 million in 2024 to 3.3 million in 2025—an 11.6 percent decline. The findings, announced via PR Newswire, paint the sharpest year-on-year contraction since the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and are being felt acutely by U.S. employers hunting for AI, semiconductor and biotech talent. Cairn attributes three-quarters of the decline to tighter security screening and higher processing fees introduced by the Trump administration last autumn. Employers cite wait times that have ballooned to a median 132 days for H-1B transfers and 98 days for L-1 “blanket” petitions.
![Report shows 12 % drop in cross-border moves of highly-skilled workers]()
For employers and workers navigating these hurdles, third-party platforms such as VisaHQ can streamline the paperwork by offering end-to-end document checks, embassy appointment scheduling and real-time status updates for U.S. visas and dozens of other destinations. The service’s intuitive dashboard (https://www.visahq.com/united-states/) gives mobility teams a single view of all filings, helping them forecast and mitigate processing delays.
Rising housing costs in primary tech hubs and the jump in required wage levels also pushed some candidates to remote-first roles outside the United States. For U.S. multinationals, the talent squeeze is already visible. Semiconductor fabricators in Arizona report running production lines at 92 percent capacity because of unfilled engineering slots, while several West Coast AI start-ups have opened satellite R&D centers in Toronto and Dublin to tap work-permit pathways that process in under four weeks. Mobility leaders interviewed in the report warn that if the trend continues, companies may accelerate near-shoring strategies and expand use of digital-nomad or Employer-of-Record models. The study recommends that employers double-down on early-cycle immigration forecasting, a practice still used by fewer than 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms. It also urges policymakers to uncork bottlenecks by restoring stateside visa “revalidation,” a program the State Department ran successfully until 2004 that allowed workers to renew visas without leaving the country. Given Congress’s gridlock, however, mobility professionals are planning for a prolonged period of scarcity. Expect bigger signing bonuses for critical skills, expanded remote-work carve-outs, and a spike in PERM labor-certification filings as employers hedge by seeking green cards sooner.
For employers and workers navigating these hurdles, third-party platforms such as VisaHQ can streamline the paperwork by offering end-to-end document checks, embassy appointment scheduling and real-time status updates for U.S. visas and dozens of other destinations. The service’s intuitive dashboard (https://www.visahq.com/united-states/) gives mobility teams a single view of all filings, helping them forecast and mitigate processing delays.
Rising housing costs in primary tech hubs and the jump in required wage levels also pushed some candidates to remote-first roles outside the United States. For U.S. multinationals, the talent squeeze is already visible. Semiconductor fabricators in Arizona report running production lines at 92 percent capacity because of unfilled engineering slots, while several West Coast AI start-ups have opened satellite R&D centers in Toronto and Dublin to tap work-permit pathways that process in under four weeks. Mobility leaders interviewed in the report warn that if the trend continues, companies may accelerate near-shoring strategies and expand use of digital-nomad or Employer-of-Record models. The study recommends that employers double-down on early-cycle immigration forecasting, a practice still used by fewer than 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms. It also urges policymakers to uncork bottlenecks by restoring stateside visa “revalidation,” a program the State Department ran successfully until 2004 that allowed workers to renew visas without leaving the country. Given Congress’s gridlock, however, mobility professionals are planning for a prolonged period of scarcity. Expect bigger signing bonuses for critical skills, expanded remote-work carve-outs, and a spike in PERM labor-certification filings as employers hedge by seeking green cards sooner.
