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PERM Tracker

All occupations · #370 of 1,410 by volume

Cooks, Short Order

SOC 35-2015.00, in the food preparation and serving major group. 74 PERM filings in DOL's current disclosure window, 57 certified and 14 denied.

Median wage

$29,598

all PERM $103,272

Filings

74

#370 of 1,410

Approval

80.3%

field 96.8%

Median days

490

13 slower than the field

Fig 01 Position in the field 535 occupations with 30+ decided

Median offered wage

$29,598above 9%

$18k $500k

Approval rate

80.3%ahead of 4%

49% 100%

Median days to decision

490 daysahead of 7%

323d 536d
Each bar counts occupations at that value. PERM runs two labour markets through one process, which is why the wage axis is two humps rather than a bell. The line marks this one. DOL PERM disclosure files

Who files this job

The sponsors and firms with the most PERM filings under this code, and the states the work sits in.

Sponsors filing it

  1. Merritt Hospitality LLC 9 filings
  2. MamaPut Afrikana Restaurant and Kitchen Inc. 7 filings
  3. El Porton Huerta Inc. 4 filings
  4. Golden Nest, LLC 4 filings
  5. Jonathans Inc 4 filings
  6. Visal LLC 4 filings

The employers with the most applications under this code. 32 of 74 filings, 43% of the total.

Firms filing it

  1. Ji Law Firm APC 11 filings
  2. Immigration Lawyers PLLC 5 filings
  3. Ostrom Law Office, LLC 4 filings
  4. William Velie Attorney at Law, PLLC 4 filings
  5. Wolzen Law Office 4 filings
  6. Immigration Solutions of America, LLC 3 filings

The law firms named on the most applications under this code. 31 of 74 filings, 42% of the total.

Where the jobs are

  • Texas 8
  • Georgia 7
  • North Carolina 7
  • Wisconsin 7
  • Massachusetts 6
  • New York 6

The worksite state on the application, which is where the job is and not where the company is headquartered. Volume by state across everyone is on the state map. These 6 states cover 41 of 74 filings.

Where this sits in the ranking

Ranked 370 of 1,410 by volume: 369 filed at least as many filings, and 1,040 filed no more.

Just above
Biological Technicians 74 filings
Just below
Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping 74 filings

Other food preparation and serving roles

Occupations sharing this one's SOC major group, which is carried in the first two digits of the code. Wages inside a group still swing hard, because the group holds every seniority level and every metro.

Reading the wage

This is the median wage employers committed to in federal filings for this occupation. It mixes every experience level and every metro, and it's a floor: the employer must offer at least the prevailing wage DOL determines for the occupation, level and county. Across all PERM filings the middle half of offered wages runs $45,178 to $141,357, so a figure inside that band is unremarkable whichever occupation it belongs to.

What these numbers don't say

The code is the identity
Two SOC codes can carry the same job title, so a title that looks duplicated on the ranking is two different occupations. Match on the code when you're checking a specific filing.
A median isn’t an offer
It's the middle of every wage committed to for this occupation across the country, entry level and principal alike. The same role's medians swing hard by worksite, which the state map shows directly.
Approval isn’t about the occupation
The denial rate moves with what happened in the filing rather than with the job title. The measured factors are on the denial risk page, published as separate rates.
Nothing here is pending
Every case in DOL's disclosure files carries a decision date, so a case still waiting is in none of these counts. Where the queue stands today is on the processing times page.

The window these figures cover

DOL's FY2026 Q3 and FY2025 Q4 and New Form FY2024 Q4 and FY2024 Q4 PERM disclosure files, unioned and de-duplicated by case number: 373,939 cases. Every case in them carries a decision, so nothing here counts what’s still pending. How each figure is built, and what it can and can't answer, is set out in the methodology.

Weighing an offer?

Compare it against this median, then check the state map, where the same occupation's medians swing hard by worksite.

Setting one?

All 1,410 occupations sort together on the wages page, and denial rates show how outcome moves with the offered wage.

Case data: DOL quarterly disclosure files (flag.dol.gov) · data through Jun 30, 2026 · quarterly

Employers and firms: Derived from the disclosure corpus · data through Aug 26, 2026 · rebuilt with each quarterly ingest