Hiring
Tata Consultancy Services says the federal suspension of its green card labor-certification filings will not change how it staffs its American business, because it has filed very few such applications. The statement, made in a stock exchange filing on Oct. 9, responds to the action announced a day earlier. TCS ranked second only to Amazon among employers of approved H-1B beneficiaries in fiscal 2026, Business Today reported.
The U.S. Department of Labor said on Oct. 8 that it would stop accepting new applications under the PERM program from eight companies, TCS among them, and stop processing their pending ones. PERM is the labor certification step that employers must complete before sponsoring a worker for an employment-based green card. According to reports, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the move alongside Vice President JD Vance and cited active federal investigations.
What TCS said
According to the filing, TCS said it “will comply with any directive from the Department of Labor.” It said it has “built a significant local workforce across 31 offices and delivery centers throughout the country,” and that “we intend to hire an additional 15,000 people in the US over the next five years.” The company said its U.S. strategy rests on local hiring, including campus recruitment.
The key figure is small. “Our PERM applications were in single digits in the last two years,” TCS said, and it therefore does not expect the suspension to affect its workforce strategy or customer engagements. The filing came a day after TCS reported its July-to-September quarter results, so it was a stand-alone disclosure and not an answer given at an earnings briefing. No TCS executive was quoted by name in the coverage reviewed.
Why it matters for hiring
PERM suspensions land hardest on workers already in the pipeline. Reports note that employees who rely on a certification to extend H-1B status beyond six years, particularly Indian nationals facing long green card backlogs, could be affected if they cannot restart the process in time. Sonderling said the named companies had sought almost three million foreign workers since 2009 and received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications.
TCS’s disclosure suggests that, for this company, the exposure is limited because few of its employees were on this path. Reuters-reported analyst commentary, relayed by Indian business media, similarly described the near-term impact as potentially limited given changes in how Indian IT companies staff their U.S. operations. Indian IT shares rose on Oct. 9, with TCS up as much as 6.11% intraday, though that move also followed its quarterly results.
Caveats
A PERM suspension is not a ban on foreign hiring, and it does not by itself cancel existing H-1B visas. The Labor Department has given no end date, and the reported reason is investigations, not proven findings. Microsoft, also on the list, said “We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce,” and said about 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B filings last fiscal year were to extend or change status for existing employees. Coverage did not include responses from Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Cognizant, Capgemini or Adobe.
What to watch
Watch for any Labor Department guidance on pending cases and whether suspensions are lifted or widened, how affected employers support workers whose status depends on certifications, and whether TCS’s 15,000-hire U.S. target shows up in later headcount disclosures.
Sources
- The Assam Tribune, report on TCS’s exchange filing on the PERM suspension, October 9, 2026. https://assamtribune.com/business/tcs-to-comply-with-us-directive-amid-perm-curbs-no-job-cuts-planned-1619778
- Business Today, “Applications were in single digits”: TCS on the U.S. green card suspension, October 9, 2026. https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/applications-were-in-single-digits-tcs-says-us-green-card-suspension-wont-impact-workforce-strategy-560551-2026-10-09
- Storyboard18, report on TCS’s U.S. hiring target and Microsoft’s visa-filings statement, October 2026. https://www.storyboard18.com/brand-marketing/tcs-reaffirms-us-hiring-target-microsoft-defends-visa-filings-amid-h-1b-scrutiny-112242.htm
- Daily Jagran, report on TCS’s response to the PERM suspension, October 2026. https://www.thedailyjagran.com/business/news/tcs-reacts-as-tata-among-tech-firms-suspended-from-us-green-card-perm-programme-we-do-not-expect-impact-10332082
- Upstox, report on TCS shares after the PERM suspension, October 9, 2026. https://upstox.com/news/market-news/stocks/tcs-shares-in-focus-how-will-us-perm-suspension-impact-the-it-major-q2-numbers-in-focus/article-201565/
- IIFL, report on Indian IT shares after the U.S. green card restrictions, October 9, 2026. https://www.indiainfoline.com/news/companies/tcs-infosys-wipro-hcl-tech-rally-up-to-5-despite-us-green-card-restrictions-know-why
- LHSC Immigration, summary of the Labor Department’s PERM suspension of eight employers, October 2026. https://lhscimmigration.com/immigration-news/microsoft-adobe-and-others-suspended-from-submitting-perm-applications/
Featured photo: Tata Consultancy Services offices in Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India, in July 2026. Representative image of the company; not a U.S. TCS office. Photo: Srinivasrjy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Cropped from the original.
