washington four of six highprofile us tech companies were among the top 10 employers for approved h1b petitions for initial employment in fiscal 2017 national foundation for american policy said in its latest report on work visa popular among indian it workersthe trend reflects the strong demand for highskilled talent in the us economyfour of 6 highprofile us tech companies amazon 2515 microsoft 1479 intel 1230 and google 1213 were among the top 10 employers for approved h1b petitions for initial employment in fy 2017facebook with 720 new h1b initial petitions approved in fy 2017 an increase of 248 or 53 per cent and apple with 673 a 7 per cent increase were 14th and 15th on the listaccording to the report amazon had the second most number of h1b petitions approved for initial employment in fy 2017 with an increase from 1416 in fy 2016 to 2515 in fy 2017 amazons use of h1bs reflects its increased growth in the us particularly in research and developmentalso the top h1b employers among highprofile tech companies match up with the us companies that spend the most on research and developmentin 2017 amazon spent almost 23 billion on rd followed by alphabet google with 166 billion intel with 131 billion microsoft with 123 billion apple with 116 billion and facebook with 78 billionresearch and development is important to a countrys economic growth it is possible some of the larger tech companies had more success gaining approvals with fewer overall applications submitted for the fiscal 2018 h1b cap and subsequent random selection once uscis received more applications than the annual limit the report said meanwhile top seven indian it companies experienced a whopping 43 per cent drop in their h1b visa approvals between 2015 and 2017 the thinktank saidthe report added that the 8468 new h1b visas for indianbased companies in the finanacial year 2017 equaled only 0006 per cent of the 160 million in the us labour forcethe top seven indianbased companies received only 8468 approved h1b petitions for initial employment in fy 2017 a decline of 43 per cent for these companies since fy 2015 when it received 14792 h1b visasin its analysis the national foundation for american policy said that the drop in h1b visas for indianbased companies is due to industry trends toward digital services such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence which require fewer workers and a choice by companies to rely less on visas and to build up their domestic workforces in the united statesin most cases companies require fewer people per project it argued