The Department of Labor shows a PERM case one line of status text in capitals and explains none of it. There is no official glossary, and of the sixteen strings the system can return, five have no published definition anywhere. Here is what the ones you are likely to see actually mean.
The status is public and keyed on the case number. The case status lookup reads it from DOL's own system, refreshed daily, with no account needed.
ANALYST REVIEW
The ordinary queue. The case is in line for a human analyst, nothing has been asked of the employer, and nothing changes until someone opens the file.
Almost every pending case is here. At the last read, 90,124 of the 95,913 cases waiting on a decision were at analyst review, about 94% of them. DOL says its analysts are working November 2025 filings, and its own average from filing to determination is 336 calendar days.
RFI ISSUED
The analyst wants something clarified before deciding. It is lighter than an audit: a question about one part of the filing rather than a demand for the whole file.
Be careful with the deadline. The phrase "request for information" and the acronym RFI appear nowhere in 20 CFR part 656. The nearest hook is 656.20(d), which lets the certifying officer ask for supplemental information and sets no deadline. The 30 days that circulates online is the audit rule wearing the wrong label. The date printed on the letter is the one that counts.
An RFI reads as bad news and mostly is not. Of the RFIs on record that reached a decision, 84% were certified, 1,799 of 2,152, and half of the ones that resolved did so within 33 days. Both describe a group of cases, not a schedule for any single one.
Audit
A formal demand for the documentation behind the application: the recruitment report, the tear sheets, the notice of filing, the resumes, and the reason each U.S. applicant was rejected. Some applications are picked at random for quality control, so an audit is not by itself an accusation.
The deadline is 30 days from the date on the audit letter, not from the day it arrives. The officer may grant one discretionary extension of up to 30 days. Missing the date costs more than the application: under 656.20(a)(3) it counts as a failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and the appeal to BALCA is then not available.
Audited cases wait in their own queue, which DOL publishes separately. As of late August 2026 it was working December 2025 filings.
SUPERVISED RECRUITMENT
Rare, and a real escalation. DOL takes the recruitment over. The employer drafts an advertisement, the certifying officer approves the wording and decides where it runs, and applicants send resumes to the officer rather than to the employer.
Two clocks, both 30 days: the draft advertisement within 30 days of being notified, and the recruitment report within 30 days of the officer asking for it. Missing either is a denial.
CERTIFIED
DOL granted the labor certification, which ends the PERM stage. The employer has 180 calendar days from the certification date to file the I-140, with no extensions. A certification is not a green card and not a petition. It is the document the I-140 gets filed with.
CERTIFIED - EXPIRED
The certification was granted and the 180-day window has since passed. That is all it says.
It is not a finding that nobody 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 carry this status. If an I-140 went in inside the window, it is unaffected. Whoever filed knows which happened, and no public page can.
DENIED
The certifying officer refused the application, and the letter states the grounds. Two routes out, both 30 days from the date of the determination.
Reconsideration goes back to the same officer, and can only carry documents DOL already received or ones that existed at filing and had to be kept on file. New evidence cannot be added to fix what the denial was based on. A request for review puts the denial in front of DOL's appeals board, and it also goes to the officer who denied it rather than to the board directly. BALCA reviews the record the decision was made on, so it is legal argument rather than a second chance to submit evidence.
Letting both windows lapse counts as a failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and the denial becomes the final determination of the Secretary.
WITHDRAWN
The employer withdrew the application and DOL will not decide it. DOL records no reason. A withdrawal is not a denial and counts against nobody.
Where in a case's life each status shows up
Each case is read once, so what can be measured is how old a case tends to be when it is found at a stage. The RFI and audit page carries the current cohort sizes.
| Status | Cases | Median days since filing | Middle 80% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analyst review | 90,124 | 155 | 22 to 282 |
| Application on hold | 1,855 | 181 | 157 to 198 |
| RFI issued | 1,091 | 356 | 301 to 422 |
| Reconsideration appeals | 2,340 | 433 | 378 to 552 |
| BALCA appeals | 357 | 686 | 460 to 743 |
| NORD issued | 121 | 691 | 657 to 735 |
The ladder holds for a mechanical reason: a case cannot be at BALCA without first being filed, reviewed and denied. Read it as a map of where a status sits, not of how long a stage lasts.
On a case that has not been decided, you can leave an email address and get one message when the status changes. Double opt-in, and the link in the email stops it.
The statuses nobody can explain
IN PROCESS, APPLICATION ON HOLD, NORD ISSUED, DETERMINATION ISSUED and DENIED - BALCA DISMISSED have no published definition, so nothing here invents one. NORD is not expanded, because no DOL or OFLC publication confirming what it stands for could be found. An acronym guessed from its shape is a plausible wrong answer, and those get acted on.
Worth knowing about application on hold: 1,831 of the 1,855 cases carrying it belong to one employer, so a count that reads like a program-wide pattern is one company's filings.
What this cannot tell you
- Why. DOL publishes a status, never its reasoning. The letter the employer got says more than any status word.
- How long your case will sit where it is. The table above is about where a status appears, not how long it lasts. A snapshot cannot watch a case enter or leave a stage.
- Whether RFIs are becoming more common. Same reason. Counting cases at a stage today is possible; counting arrivals last month is not.
- Whether your case will be pulled for an RFI or an audit. Measured rates describe named groups, and belonging to a group with a 9% rate does not make a case 9% likely. There is deliberately no blended risk score anywhere on this site, because the factors are not independent.
- A date. Where an estimated decision window appears elsewhere on this site, our own median error is around 50 days.
- Anything from the last few hours. The data is refreshed daily, not live, and DOL is the authority for any single case.
Related
- Case status lookup, which takes PERM, prevailing wage and LCA numbers
- RFIs, audits and appeals, for the current count at each stage
- PERM processing times, for where DOL's queues stand
