Every PERM application waits in the same line, and the line is ordered by the month the application was filed. That's the whole model. Everything else is detail sitting on top of it. PERM Tracker's PERM queue page counts every case still waiting in that line by filing month, a count DOL doesn't publish.
This walks through what "roughly first in, first out" means in practice, what the one number the Department of Labor publishes says, and where the model stops being useful.
Who gets decided first?
Applications in analyst review are taken in filing-month order, earliest month first. Cases pulled out for an audit, a hold or an appeal leave that line.
November 9, 2026: DOL is finishing January 2026's last cases.
What this shows
An illustration of the line on November 9, 2026, run forward. Each tray is one filing month. Its stack is that month's cases still in analyst review, drawn to scale. The 1,106 older cases still in line sit on the desk and go first. The reviewer works at DOL's average over the last 32 days we observed: about 525 cases a day, oldest first. There are 21,360 cases ahead of May 2026, so the line reaches it around December 24, 2026. It reaches the month's end around January 14, 2027. That's the estimate the queue month pages give, if DOL keeps that pace and works strictly in filing order. New filings joining the back aren't drawn. Drag along the line, or scroll, to move through the days.
DOL's analyst review queue works in filing order. An application filed in October 2025 is looked at before one filed in December 2025, whatever the employer, the job or the state, and however urgent the case is for the person waiting.
"Analyst review" is the status DOL's case system gives a PERM application while it waits in that line, and most applications carry it from filing until a decision. It doesn't mean anything is wrong with the case. How long it lasts depends on how far your filing month is from the one DOL is working: By our check of DOL's case status on November 9, 2026, DOL's analyst review is working cases filed in February 2026. DOL's published average from filing to a decision is 300 days, measured on the cases it decided in the last 30 days, as of October 31, 2026.
The order goes by filing month rather than filing day, and DOL clears a month over several weeks. Inside the month it has tended to go roughly alphabetically by employer name, though not reliably (more on that below).
Not every case rides that queue the whole way. On our daily sweep in late September 2026, the cases DOL hadn't decided yet split like this:
| Where a waiting case sits | Cases | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Analyst review | 90,127 | the ordinary queue, worked in filing order |
| Out of filing order | 3,074 | an audit, an information request, supervised recruitment or a hold |
| Under appeal or review | 2,721 | went to appeal after an adverse determination |
Only the first group moves in filing order. That answers "DOL has passed my month and I still have nothing". A case in the second or third group has left the line, and its filing month stopped predicting anything the day it did.
What is the frontier?
The frontier is the filing month DOL's analysts are working through, shown above from PERM Tracker's daily check of DOL's own case statuses. Until October 31, 2026, DOL printed that month on its processing times page every week or two. It now prints only the average days to a decision over the last 30, 90 and 180 days, and no audit figure.
That's the frontier. It's the front of the line, and it's the single most useful public fact about where a case stands. Subtract your filing month from it and you have your distance in queue terms.
Two things about it catch people out.
DOL overwrote its month every time it published, so its own page never said how fast the queue was moving. Keeping every reading was the only way to see the steps, and processing times keeps all of them, up to October 21, 2026, the last reading that carried a month.
The second thing is that DOL's month was its own claim about itself. It never counted the pile. Scanning cases one by one finds the oldest filing month that isn't substantially decided yet, and that month could sit behind the one DOL printed. With DOL printing no month now, that count is the measure left: the PERM queue page shows the cases still waiting in every filing month and the month DOL is working by that count.
Does the employer's first letter matter?
Less than you'll read elsewhere, and right now not at all.
Across the decided record, DOL has tended to work a filing month alphabetically by employer name, so an A company's case was usually decided before a Z company's from the same month. Every public estimator uses this. Almost none of them says how large the effect is, or checks whether it still holds.
Measured against the average across the decided corpus:
| Compared to the average | |
|---|---|
| A, the fastest letter | 11.4 days earlier |
| Z, the slowest | 15.7 days later |
| The alphabet end to end | about 27 days |
It also isn't reliable. In 6 of 30 filing months the back half of the alphabet came out faster than the front.
And at the front of the queue it has stopped showing. We rebuilt the queue as it stood on 13 September 2026 and followed what DOL decided over the next two weeks: about 80% of November 2025's normal-queue cases were decided whatever the employer's initial, U and Z included. Adding the letter made our estimates worse (a typical miss of 3.9 days without it, 6.5 with it), so they no longer use it. Your filing month is what matters.
Why isn't a queue position a promise?
Because the queue's speed isn't stable.
Over the six months of determinations to June 2026, DOL cleared 1.8 months of filing queue for every calendar month that passed. Anything above 1.0 means it's gaining on the backlog. Across the whole record on file, that rate has run between 0.33 and 2.50. A forecast built on the fast years and one built on the slow years land months apart, and both used real DOL data.
The arithmetic people reach for first doesn't work either. Take the 19,787 determinations DOL issued in June 2026 against the roughly 96,000 cases waiting at the time. Dividing one into the other gives about five months and means little: it counts cases filed after yours, and cases on hold or at an RFI that aren't in the line at all.
A date here instead counts the cases in DOL's normal queue filed before yours and divides by the pace DOL has been deciding them over the last four weeks. Every date is graded against real decisions on the estimate scorecard. A single date quoted without a range or a track record is a guess with the error bars taken off.
Where does my case sit?
The frontier tells you about a month. Your case number tells you about your case, and the two answer different questions.
The case status lookup takes a case number and shows what DOL currently holds against it, including the status that says whether the case is still in analyst review or has stepped out of the line. If the number isn't already held, DOL is asked for it at that moment. No account is needed, and you can leave an email address to hear when the status changes.
What this can't tell you
- When a specific case will be decided. A filing month gives you an order but no date.
- Which of the three groups a case is in, unless DOL's own status says so. That comes from the case number. The queue can't show it.
- Why DOL prioritises the way it does. The order inside a month is observable, but the reasoning behind a reprioritisation isn't published.
- Anything about the last few hours. These figures are refreshed daily from DOL. A case decided this morning shows on DOL's system first.
- Whether the current pace holds. Every rate on this page describes what already happened. None of them is a commitment by anyone.
Related
- PERM queue backlog, month by month, with each letter's effect measured
- Processing times, every DOL reading on record and how far it moved
- Case status lookup, for one case number
