body shop

plural body shops · alternative bodyshop

1. USautomotiveA workshop in which damage to the bodywork of cars is repaired.

   Synonyms: panel beaters

2. slangbusinessA consultancy that recruits workers (generally in information technology) in order to contract out their services on a tactical short- to mid-term basis.

   Flouting employment discrimination laws, unethical body shops blatantly advertise in US publications for jobs that clearly target foreign nationals.

   2013, Vivek Wadhwa, The Immigrant Exodus, page 53

   1 more example

   These body shops, they have a business model of spamming the H-1B lottery with lots of petitions because they don’t really care about which individuals are going to win the lottery. All that they care about is getting some number of visas so that they can then contract out those workers to third-party companies.

   2025 September 26, Kevin Roose, Casey Newton, quoting Jeremy Neufeld, “The Great A.I. Build-Out + H-1B Visa Chaos + TikTok Braces for the Rapture”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC