You know your filing month, and you want to know how much sits in front of it. Three pages here answer that, and each answers a different half. Here's the order that helps most.
If you don't have the filing month to hand, PERM Tracker's free case status lookup gives it, read from DOL's own case-status service. The same box takes PERM numbers, prevailing wage requests and H-1B labor condition applications, pending ones included, and no account is needed.
Where is DOL working right now
Start at the queue backlog page. It opens with the filing month DOL's analyst review is working, found each day from DOL's own case statuses, and the size of everything still behind it.
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 cases still undecided behind that month come from our own sweep of DOL's case status system, read in batches. DOL's disclosure files carry no pending rows at all, so that count can't come from them.
Find your month in that chart and open it. A month page gives the three numbers that matter for one case: how many applications carry that filing date, how many already have a decision, and how many older cases are still undecided in front of it. For November 2025, on October 11, 2026, that was 15,034 filed, 2,645 decided, and 4,944 cases filed earlier still waiting.
That last figure is the queue ahead of you. It counts only cases DOL still has to decide, which is the only version that means anything.
How fast is it moving
The processing times page carries DOL's own figures, read from DOL's page. For PERM that's the average days to a decision over the last 30, 90 and 180 days: DOL stopped printing a PERM filing month on October 31, 2026. For wage requests it still prints the month each of its two queues is working, and they don't move together. By our daily check of DOL's case status on November 9, 2026, DOL is deciding PERM wage requests filed on August 4, 2026, about 3 months after they were filed. DOL's own table, dated September 30, 2026, names June 2026.
The same page carries DOL's average time to a determination, 300 days as of October 31, 2026, plus every queue reading DOL has published since we started keeping them.
Measured a second way, from determination dates in the disclosure files, the queue advanced about 1.80 filing months per calendar month over the six determination months to June 2026. Anything above 1.0 means DOL was clearing filing dates faster than new ones arrived. Across the whole record that rate has run between 0.33 and 2.50, which is why it isn't a rate to plan around.
What did DOL do today
The decision activity page is the daily view. Over the last 14 days it counted 852 determinations per weekday and 233 per weekend day. Those are kept apart because a weekday and a weekend day aren't the same working day, and averaging them understates the weekday pace.
The more useful half is underneath the counts: the individual cases DOL moved, with what each one moved from and to. A count has no "from", so it can't separate an information request being issued from one being answered. The transition list can, and those are opposite events.
The estimate, and how wrong it usually is
Look a case up and there's an estimate below the federal record. It leads with one date, puts the window directly under it, and names the model it came from. It's adjusted for the stage the case is at. It counts only the cases in DOL's normal queue ahead of yours and leaves out the ones on hold, at an RFI or on appeal.
The figure to hold on to is on the estimate scorecard: near the front of the queue our dates have typically landed within a few days of DOL's decision, and the page shows how far out that holds as the daily sample fills.
If the estimated date has already gone by, no date is given. An estimate whose window has elapsed isn't an estimate, and the page says so instead.
You can also leave an email address on a pending case and hear when DOL's status changes. Double opt in, one email per change, and it works for wage requests and LCAs too.
What this can't tell you
- Your date. None of this is a decision date. It's the position of a queue and the spread of what happened to cases like yours.
- Anything about a case that has left filing order. Of the pending cases, 3,074 were last seen out of filing order on an information request, audit, supervised recruitment or hold, and 2,721 were under appeal or review. Filing month stops predicting those, and the queue page keeps them separate for that reason.
- Why DOL did anything. No reasoning is published for a certification, a denial or an audit.
- A tidy single position. DOL publishes November 2025 while the per-case scan measures October 2025 as the oldest month not substantially decided. Both are shown as they are, and neither is adjusted towards the other.
- A live reading. Data is refreshed daily. Because the backlog comes from a sweep, a case decided between sweeps still counts as waiting, so those figures run a little high rather than low.
- Which prevailing wage queue a request is in. DOL runs two, they move at different speeds, and the case record doesn't say which one a request sits in.
- One risk number. We publish measured denial and audit rates and refuse to blend them into a score, because the factors aren't independent and a single letter grade would read as precision the data can't support.
Related
- Look up a PERM case by number, for the record behind the estimate
- How the PERM queue works, for what the filing month actually governs
- Timeline calculator, for the percentile spread of real decided cases
