An audit is DOL asking the employer to prove what the application already said. It's a request for documents, and it arrives with a deadline attached. It isn't a finding against the case, and it isn't a denial.
It also isn't always about your case at all. 20 CFR 656.20(a) says review of an application "may lead to an audit," and then adds, in the same paragraph, that "certain applications may be selected randomly for audit and quality control purposes." Some audits are a sample.
Audit, RFI, supervised recruitment: three different letters
People call all three of these an audit. DOL runs them as separate instruments with separate deadlines, and it tracks them as separate statuses in separate queues.
| What arrived | What it is | The deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Audit letter | A formal instrument under 20 CFR 656.20. It states the documentation the employer must submit and warns that the application will be denied if the documents aren't sent in time. | 30 days from the date of the letter. The Certifying Officer may grant one extension of up to 30 more days, at their discretion. |
| RFI (request for information) | Under 20 CFR 656.20(d), the Certifying Officer may request supplemental information or documentation at any point before a final determination, whether in the course of an audit or not. Narrower than an audit and not a formal audit. | Whatever the letter says. The regulation sets no fixed window for this one. |
| Supervised recruitment | DOL takes the recruitment over. The employer advertises where the Officer directs, in wording the Officer approves first, and applications go to the Officer rather than to the employer. | A draft advertisement to the Certifying Officer within 30 days of being told supervised recruitment is required (20 CFR 656.21(b)(1)). |
The 30-day audit deadline is the one to take seriously, and not only because missing it denies the case. Under 656.20(a)(3), failing to provide the documentation in time "constitutes a refusal to exhaust available administrative remedies," and the review procedure at 656.26 then isn't available. Missing the date doesn't just lose the case, it closes the appeal.
There's a second consequence further out. A substantial failure to provide documentation can also lead the Certifying Officer to require supervised recruitment on that employer's future filings for up to two years.
What the audit letter asks for
The letter itself lists the documents, so nothing here replaces reading it. In practice it's the recruitment file: the recruitment report describing every step and every applicant, the ads and postings with their dates, the State Workforce Agency job order, proof of the notice of filing, resumes received with a lawful job-related reason recorded for each rejection, and a business necessity justification for any requirement that goes beyond the norm for the occupation.
Firms that keep that file from day one hand it over. Firms that build it after the letter arrives have 30 days to reconstruct a year of recruitment. The recruitment checklist is the documentation set, laid out step by step.
What an audit does to the timeline
Audited cases leave the ordinary queue and join a slower one. DOL publishes both positions on its own processing times page: an Analyst Review queue and a separate Audit Review queue, each stamped with the filing month DOL has reached in it. PERM Tracker reads both and shows them with DOL's own as-of date on the processing times page.
Compare the two months and you have the real answer to "how much longer", in the only terms DOL publishes it: the audit queue sits behind analyst review, and the gap between the two positions is the cost of the audit. As of October 5, 2026, DOL's analyst review is working cases filed in December 2025, and its published average from filing to a decision is 336 days, measured on the cases it decided in August 2026.
That average includes audited and unaudited cases together, so it's the wrong figure to use for a case you already know was audited. The audit queue position is the right one.
Does an audit mean the case is going to be denied
No, and PERM Tracker will not put a number on it either, for a reason worth stating plainly.
For RFIs, there's something real to report. The RFI and audit page follows what happens to cases after an RFI is issued, and the measured outcome is that most of them end in a certification. That page carries the counts, the median time an RFI takes to resolve as a population figure, and the as-of date on both, which is where to read it rather than from a number quoted here.
For audits specifically, PERM Tracker publishes no rate at all, because the honest state of that measurement is a hole. PERM Tracker's own audit count currently reads zero, and zero is plainly wrong: DOL publishes a live Audit Review queue with cases in it. A missing measurement is not a finding, and publishing the zero, or a plausible number in its place, would be worse than saying so.
Two things also stay off the page on principle. A rate over a group isn't a probability for one member of it, and PERM Tracker holds one status reading per case, so it can't see a case move from one status to another and has no basis for a transition rate at all. Anything of that shape next to a real case number would be read as a forecast for that specific case.
For what the record does support about denials, the denial rates page cuts DOL's decided cases by offered wage, by fiscal year, and by the three questions the ETA-9089 itself asks. Denials are rare and heavily concentrated, and the page says what a group rate can and can't tell you.
What the worker can do while it's pending
The clock is running on somebody else's desk. PERM applications are filed by the employer under 20 CFR 656.17(a)(1), so the audit letter went to the employer and its attorney, the documents come from the employer's files, and the response is the employer's to make. There's no step in the regulation that's yours.
What you can do is watch it. PERM case status shows the status DOL currently holds against a case number, in plain English, and will email you once when it changes. PENDING AUDIT RESPONSE means DOL is waiting on the employer. When that changes, you'll see it.
Related
- PERM RFI, audits and appeals: how many cases are standing at each review stage, and what the record shows happened after an RFI
- Common PERM audit triggers: what draws one
- PERM recruitment checklist: the documentation an audit asks for
- Check your PERM case status: where DOL has one specific case right now
The audit response deadline, on a calendar
PERM Tracker tracks RFI and audit dates per case with the response deadline computed from the letter date, plus reminders. Free, and it takes under a minute to set up.
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