You can check a pending PERM case yourself, today, without going through anyone. The Department of Labor runs a public case-status search on its FLAG system, and PERM case status queries it for you free, with DOL's status word translated into plain English on the way back.
Plenty of law-firm pages say only the employer or the attorney can check a pending PERM. That holds for the case file. It doesn't hold for the status, which is public, keyed on the case number, and answerable in about a second.
Where your case number comes from
The case number is on the ETA-9089 filing receipt, and it appears on every status notice DOL sends the employer, so whoever filed the case has it. That's the employer's immigration attorney, or the HR or global-mobility contact at the company. Asking for it is an ordinary request, and it's the one piece of information you need.
PERM case numbers come in two shapes, and only one of them carries a date:
- The current four-part form, like
G-100-26125-868956. The middle block encodes the day the case entered DOL's system:26is the year and125is the 125th day of it, so that case was filed on May 5, 2026. Measured against 20,000 cases in DOL's own records, that decoding matches DOL's recorded receipt date exactly about 89% of the time and runs a day or two late otherwise. - The older three-part form used for cases filed in 2022 and 2023, like
A-23043-00641. PERM Tracker looks these up, and it refuses to read a filing date out of one: the same decoding lands 13% of the time on this format, so a queue position built on it would be a guess wearing a number.
If your number comes back with nothing attached, the likeliest explanation is a mistyped digit in the serial, which still produces a well-formed case number. A very recent filing can also be genuinely pending and genuinely absent from a scan that runs on a schedule.
What DOL's status words mean
DOL shows a case one string in capitals and explains none of them. Here's what they are, with the section of 20 CFR part 656 each deadline comes from.
🚨 CERTIFIED - EXPIRED is not what it sounds like
Expiry here is a calendar event, not a finding that nothing was filed. DOL grants the certification, USCIS receives the I-140, and nothing suggests DOL is told when one arrives. So a case where the employer filed on day 30 and a case where nobody ever filed both end up carrying this status. If an I-140 went in inside the window, it's unaffected. The employer's attorney knows which of the two happened, and no public page can.
Two of DOL's statuses have no published definition at all. IN PROCESS and APPLICATION ON HOLD are both pending states, and DOL publishes nothing that separates either from analyst review. PERM Tracker says so on the page rather than filling the gap, because a plausible wrong explanation of a government status is worse than no explanation: from the outside you can't tell the two apart, and you'd act on it.
Getting told when the status changes
On a case that hasn't been decided, PERM case status takes an email address and sends one message when the status changes. It's double opt-in, so nothing is sent until you confirm the address, and it's offered only on cases that can still move, since there's nothing to report on a case DOL has already decided.
As of August 2026, PERM Tracker tracks about 414,000 PERM cases this way, roughly 99,000 of them still pending, and re-checks the undecided ones against DOL's own case-status search twice a day. That's a sweep rather than a live reading: a case decided in the last few hours shows at DOL first, and DOL is the authority for any single case.
Where your case sits in the queue
The status says what's happening. It doesn't say how far off a decision is, and two DOL figures answer that better. As of August 2026, DOL is working cases filed around September 2025 in analyst review, and publishes an average of about 372 days from filing to determination. Both come from OFLC's own processing times page and both move, so the live processing times page carries each one with the date DOL published it.
Subtract your own filing month from the month DOL is working and you have a rough distance in queue terms. The backlog page shows how many cases are still undecided in each filing month, which DOL's quarterly files can't show because they contain no pending rows at all. The timeline calculator puts several models of the same question side by side and lets them disagree.
What none of them will do is give you odds. PERM Tracker holds one reading per case and can't watch a case move from one status to another, so it has no basis for a transition rate, and a number of that shape printed next to a real case number would be read as a forecast for that specific case.
What you can't see, and why
PERM applications are filed by the employer, not the worker: under 20 CFR 656.17(a)(1) it's the employer who applies, on the worker's behalf. That single fact decides what's visible to whom.
The documents, the recruitment file, the audit letter, the RFI, the denial letter and all correspondence with DOL go to the employer and its attorney. Every deadline in this article runs on their desk, not yours. The public record shows the status, the dates, and the employer's own track record across its decided cases. It doesn't show what's in the file, and asking the attorney is the only route to that.
Related
- PERM case status: the lookup itself
- PERM RFI, audits and appeals: what happens at each review stage, and how many cases are standing at each one
- How to read the PERM data: which page or calculator answers which question
- What is PERM labor certification: the process the status words belong to
Check a Case Now
One case number in, DOL's status out, in plain English. Free, no account, and it takes about a second.
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