Frequently asked questions

Spreadsheets require manual deadline math, don’t send reminders, and break when regulations change. PERM Tracker auto-calculates 11 deadline types per case based on DOL regulations (20 CFR 656), sends proactive alerts, validates compliance, and updates all downstream dates when one date changes.

We monitor DOL regulatory changes and update the deadline calculations accordingly. When regulations change, your existing cases are recalculated automatically. You don’t need to manually update formulas or check for rule changes.

PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) is the process by which U.S. employers demonstrate to the Department of Labor that there are no qualified, willing, and available U.S. workers for a position offered to a foreign national. It’s typically the first step in the employment-based green card process for EB-2 and EB-3 categories.

The complete PERM process typically runs 18 to 36 months end to end: the prevailing wage determination, the recruitment period (2-3 months), the 30-day quiet period, and DOL's processing of the ETA 9089 itself, which DOL's own published average puts at 336 days as of October 5, 2026. Cases selected for audit take longer. The processing times page carries the live figure, and the case status page reads any specific case number.

The PERM process has five main stages: (1) Prevailing Wage Determination: submit to NPWC and receive the wage level for the position. (2) Recruitment: conduct required advertising including SWA job order, newspaper ads, and additional recruitment steps for professional occupations. (3) Filing: submit ETA Form 9089 electronically after the 30-day cooling-off period. (4) DOL Review: wait for DOL adjudication (approval, denial, or audit). (5) I-140 Filing: file the immigrant petition within 180 days of PERM certification.

The National Prevailing Wage Center sets the minimum wage an employer must offer for the role, from its occupation, skill level and area. Validity is anchored to the wage year, not counted from the determination date: one issued 30 June 2026 is good for 90 days, one issued the next morning is good for 364. The PERM has to be filed before it expires. Track a request by putting its P- number into case status, or search by employer.

All PERM cases require: a State Workforce Agency (SWA) job order for 30 days, two print newspaper advertisements, and a 30-day internal company posting. Professional occupations (requiring a bachelor's degree or higher) also need three additional recruitment steps from a list including: job fairs, employer website posting, employee referral program, campus recruitment, trade/professional organizations, or private placement agencies.

Common PERM audit triggers include: layoffs in the same occupation within 6 months, job requirements that exceed the norm for the occupation (such as requiring a specific degree or foreign language without business necessity), discrepancies between the job offer and the beneficiary's qualifications, unusual wage levels, and random selection. Clean documentation and well-justified job requirements reduce audit risk.

The ETA 9089 can be filed once 30 days have passed since the last mandatory recruitment step, and no later than 180 days after the first one: under 20 CFR 656.17(e), no mandatory step may be more than 180 days old on the day you file. Filing too early is a denial, and missing the end means starting recruitment over. PERM Tracker works out this window from your recruitment dates.

The I-140 immigrant petition must be filed within 180 days of PERM certification. Missing this deadline means the PERM certification expires and the entire process must be restarted. PERM Tracker tracks this deadline automatically and sends notifications as it approaches.

Yes. Most advice says only the employer or the attorney can check a pending PERM, and that's wrong: DOL's own FLAG system answers a case number for anyone who has it, pending cases included. Put yours into case status for the live DOL status, your place in the queue, a stage-aware estimate and an optional email alert. Wage request (P-) and H-1B LCA (I-) numbers work the same way. The number is on the filing receipt, or search the employer by name.

Straight from the Department of Labor. The queue position and average days come from DOL's own published processing times, refreshed automatically, and the medians come from DOL's quarterly disclosure files: 250,000+ real decided cases, unioned and de-duplicated by case number. The methodology page lists every source and how each figure is built.

California and Texas lead by a wide margin, and volume tracks industry concentration rather than a faster or slower line: DOL works one national queue, oldest first. The interactive state map shows filings, approval rates, median days and median wages for every state, from DOL's own files.

The wages page shows median offered wages by occupation from DOL's disclosure files. These are wages employers committed to in federal filings. Hourly and other units are annualized before medians are taken.

Denials are rare: across DOL's current disclosure window under 3% of decided PERM cases were denied, with withdrawn cases excluded from both sides of that ratio. The rate isn’t evenly spread. The denial rates page breaks it down by offered wage, by fiscal year, and by the three risk questions the ETA-9089 itself asks. A group rate isn’t a probability for any single case.

Fragomen files by far the most, followed by Berry Appleman & Leiden and Ogletree Deakins. Our law firms page ranks the most active firms with case volume, approval rate and median processing days, straight from the firm name DOL prints on every filing. One caution the page states too: DOL prints a single practice under several spellings, so a big firm's true total can span more than one row. Approval rates cluster above 99% across the whole list.

The employers page ranks the hundred biggest PERM sponsors in the current disclosure window, searchable, with each one's filings, certifications, approval rate and median processing days. Names appear exactly as DOL prints them, so one company can appear under several legal entities.