Last year there were 233,000 petitions. Only 85k petitions are actually accepted each year. Compare that to 172,500 petitions received in 2014 and 125,000 in 2013.

This means the rate of companies that use h-1b has actually slowed down by a lot. I know as a fact that most of the US tech companies that have offices in Europe, are actually transitioning to using L-1 visas and don't apply for H-1b anymore.

If you're a small startup and you want to hire someone who is not a US citizen your options are pretty limited right now.