Law Offices of Peter Chu

What these numbers don't say

The wage is the job, not the payer

The median offered wage moves almost entirely with what roles their clients file. A software developer and a poultry cutter are different numbers wherever they are filed, so this figure is not plotted against the field and no percentile is given for it: that comparison would rank occupation mix and call it pay. Wages by occupation are on the wages page.

Nothing here is waiting

Every row in DOL's disclosure files carries a decision date, so a case still in the queue is in none of these counts. The live tracker that does see pending cases records the employer on each one and not the firm, so a firm's current queue cannot be broken out at all. Where the queue stands overall is on the processing times page.

The approval rate barely separates firms

Across every firm with enough decided cases to carry a rate the median is above 99%, and hundreds have no denials at all. Placing near the top of that axis mostly means being level with the rest of it.

None of this measures the advice

It measures filings that DOL approved or denied. Whether the case was worth filing, what it cost, and how the firm handled an audit aren’t in these files.

A median over 1 decided cases

That’s a middle of a handful, and it moves with which months those few cases were filed in rather than with the firm. Where the queue stands today is on the processing times page.