Check a PERM case

A case number gets you the status in plain English, what the queue in front of it looks like, and the employer's own record. It will not get you a decision date, and the page says why.

Common questions

Where do I find my PERM case number?

On the ETA-9089 filing receipt, and on any status notice DOL sent the employer. Current ones look like G-100-26125-868956; cases filed in 2022 and 2023 use a shorter form like A-23043-00641, and both work here. The employer's attorney has it if you don't.

Is this DOL's official status?

Close to it, and the chain is worth stating. These statuses come from DOL's own case-status search, which we sweep against every pending case twice a day and against the full corpus daily. DOL publishes no documented API for it, so this is the same endpoint their search page uses rather than a supported one. It is a sweep, not a live reading: a case decided since the last sweep will show at DOL first, and DOL is the authority for any single case.

Is the decision date on this page a prediction for my case?

It's an estimate, labeled as one, and the label is doing real work. The window comes from a named model over this case's own filing month, read at the percentile its current stage implies: a case at RFI reads its month's p90, not the median, because the audited tail is measured. It is checkable arithmetic over DOL's decided cases, and it is not a promise about any single case.

Why won't you tell me my odds of being certified?

A single odds figure would read as precision the data cannot support. The measured denial factors are not independent, so blending them into one score hides which one is doing the work. The denial-rate pages publish the measured rates separately and refuse the blend on purpose. What is real, and shown, is the employer's published record across its own decided cases.

My case isn't here. Is something wrong?

Almost certainly not. The per-case snapshot covers filings from mid-2023 and rebuilds on a schedule, so a very recent filing can be genuinely pending and genuinely absent. DOL's published decision files start at fiscal year 2024. A wrong digit in the serial is also worth ruling out, since it still makes a well-formed case number.

What does my case number actually mean?

The current format encodes its own filing date. In G-100-26125-868956, the 26 is the year and the 125 is the day of that year, so it decodes to May 5, 2026. Measured against 20,000 cases in DOL's records, that decoded date matches exactly 89% of the time and is a day or two off otherwise. The older three-part format, like A-23043-00641, does not: the same reading lands 13% of the time, so this page refuses to decode one rather than guess a filing month.

Do you store the case number I type in?

No. It goes into the page's address so you can bookmark or share the result, and it's stripped out of analytics before anything is sent. Nothing is written down and nothing goes to a third party.

These statuses are read from DOL directly. The FLAG case-status search answers a batch lookup, and we run it against every undecided case every 12 hours and against all of them weekly. DOL publishes no documented API for this, so it is the same endpoint their own search page uses rather than a supported one. The date shown on each case is when the tracker saw it, not when we did, and it is a snapshot rather than a live feed. DOL is the authority for any case and this page is never a substitute for the determination letter. Check it yourself at flag.dol.gov.

The rules behind these numbers

Other calculators

Three reasons a real case is missing here

It was filed very recently. The per-case snapshot is rebuilt on a schedule, so a case filed in the last few days can be genuinely pending and genuinely absent here.

It was filed before mid-2023. The per-case status data does not reach further back than that, and DOL's published decision files start at fiscal year 2024.

A digit is off. The shape is right, so it got this far, and one wrong digit in the serial is still a well-formed case number that belongs to nobody. Worth checking against the receipt.

What this page will not tell you

A guaranteed decision date. The estimate above is a statistic about this case's filing month, read at the percentile its stage implies, from a named model with its spread shown. It is checkable and it is not a promise: cases leave the queue out of order through audits and appeals, and DOL publishes no schedule. The timeline calculator shows every model side by side, disagreements included.

How likely this case is to be certified. A single odds figure would read as precision the data cannot support: the measured factors are not independent, and blending them into one number hides which one is doing the work. The denial-rate data publishes the measured rates separately and refuses the blend, on purpose.

Anything about the worker. DOL's disclosure files carry no beneficiary name, so this project holds employers, job titles and case numbers, and never a person.