Apologies if my presentation is inadequate, but I’m not suggesting that stock price is a proxy for headcount. I’m simply arguing that you have to look at the two together in the context of a particular firm — for exactly the reason you note, ie NVIDIA has a lower head count per share etc. It’s the ratio that matters and is the best proxy we have for inferring the cause of a shift in hiring. Lower growth of headcount and stock price going down suggests the cause of the former is reduced expectation of return, ie particular industry or general economic slowdown; lower growth of headcount and stock price remaining constant or rising would be more suggestive of (not causal proof of course) of an AI-related effect.

If we don’t have the data we shouldn’t argue that the data we do have says what it doesn’t. I actually agree with you and the author that trying to figure out what’s going on in labor markets right now is incredibly important — but for that very reason we have to be careful not to accept too easy conclusions. There’s a lot of information we do have about firm expenditure on labor within public filings — I’ll actually try to pull some figures this weekend, can let you know when I do if you’re interested. I think the interesting question on the AI side is whether it allows more firms to present a ratio like NVIDIA, ie reducing expenditure on labor that is considered a “cost center” in a particular industry.

>> lower growth of headcount and stock price remaining constant or rising would be more suggestive of (not causal proof of course) of an AI-related effect.

Since stock prices are basically future expectations, wouldnt it probably be because investors expect the company to be more efficient cashflow wise? (Earn more per employee)

Not necessarily because they already are more cashflow efficient?

> Yes, this is something concrete that I can agree on. But how would you prove that given that we don't have access to that data?

Without that data you can't really draw any conclusion can you? For all we know companies are hiring a higher percentage of American workers now. All we know from the data shown is that companies are hiring some new H1-B holders and retaining a lot of existing H1-B holders.

> given that we don't have access to that data?

Actually, we do have some of that data. You can just look at the H-1B employer datahub, filter by Google (or whichever other employer you want to scrutinize), and then look at the crosstab.

https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...

Looking at Google specifically, I observe two things:

1. The number of new approvals has gone down drastically since 2019 (2019: 2706, 2020: 1680, 2021: 1445, 2022: 1573, 2023: 1263, 2024: 1065, 2025: 1250). (These numbers were derived by summing up all the rows for a given year, but it's close enough to just look at the biggest number that represents HQ.)

Compared to the overall change in total employees as reported in the earnings calls (which was accelerating up through 2022 but then stagnated around 2025), we don't actually see much anything noteworthy.

2. Most approvals are either renewals ("Continuation Approval"), external hires who are just transferring their existing H-1B visas ("Change of Employer Approval"), and internal transfers ("Amended Approval").

> Without that data you can't really draw any conclusion can you?

We're not dealing with software here. It's not black and white. We can try to make best guesses and then try to support it by evidence or reject it by evidence. A theory that is presented is that H1-B appear to replace US workers, but you are encouraged to provide another theory by using evidence.

> All we know from the data shown is that companies are hiring some new H1-B holders and retaining a lot of existing H1-B holders.

And why do you think that's not suitable evidence for the given theory? Another possible point of data that seems to point in the same direction could be the US Employment-Population Ratio, which, apart from some ups and downs, seems to have been steadily going down since 2000 [1]. More specifically, California's unemployment rate seems to go up since 2021 [2]. But these two data sources are way more broad than just big tech of course.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO

[2]: https://labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/data/top-statistics.html

Of course it’s not black and white: it’s the very fact that there are so many possible explanations of the current changes that makes pretending data supports a given explanation more than another when it doesn’t so misleading. There’s no doubt that offshoring and H1-B hiring is an important trend — as it has been since the 1990s, NAFTA etc. We don’t need this article to tell us that. The difficult question is whether AI is actually introducing a new dynamic into the situation. The article suggests it isn’t. All I’m arguing is that, whether or not the conclusion is ultimately true, the data presented does not shed light on this important question.