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PERM Tracker

Tools

Green card timeline

Every stage of an employment-based green card, drawn to scale from what DOL and USCIS publish.

  1. Prevailing wage determination

    No published figure

    DOL rules on the minimum wage the job must pay. Nothing else can start until it is issued, and the date it is issued sets every deadline that follows.

    Government queue. A forecast over a backlog. It moves when the agency moves.

  2. Recruitment and the quiet period

    2 months

    A job order, two Sunday advertisements and a notice of filing, then 30 days in which no application may be filed. Both windows are fixed by regulation and both are on the employer.

    Fixed by regulation. Exact arithmetic on the prevailing wage determination.

  3. PERM decision

    12 months

    DOL works through filing months in order and goes alphabetically by employer within a month. An audit or a request for information takes a case out of that order.

    Government queue. A forecast over a backlog. It moves when the agency moves.

  4. I-140 petition

    31 months

    USCIS decides the immigrant petition. Premium processing buys a first review in 15 business days for most categories, or 45 for EB-1C and national interest waivers.

    Government queue. A forecast over a backlog. It moves when the agency moves.

    USCIS published times, by category

    • Advanced degree or exceptional ability

      2.5–7.5 mo

    • Skilled worker

      4–8.5 mo

    • Unskilled worker

      7.5–12.5 mo

    • Outstanding professor or researcher

      15.5–19 mo

    • Professional nurse or physical therapist

      24.5–26 mo

    • Multinational executive or manager

      27–29 mo

    • National interest waiver

      29–32 mo

    • Extraordinary ability

      31–34.5 mo

    USCIS, as of 2026-08-17. The bar above uses the category with the most cases pending.

  5. Waiting for a visa number

    No published figure

    How long depends on the category and the country of birth, and for some it is the longest stage by far. The cutoff itself is published every month and is shown below; what has no number is the wait, because a cutoff is a position in a queue rather than a length of time, and it moves backwards as well as forwards.

    Not knowable. No published figure supports a number here.

    Where the line stood in September 2026

    Category All other China India
    EB2 Current Sep 2021 Unavailable
    EB3 Sep 2024 Jan 2022 Jan 2014

    Final action dates from the September 2026 bulletin, which is the newest one held here and not necessarily the one in force. A priority date earlier than the cell is current. Check the current bulletin

2 months of 45 are on your side of the process.

The rest is queue time at DOL and USCIS, plus a wait for a visa number that no published figure covers. The recruitment window is the one you set the pace on, and missing a date there restarts the case.

The I-140 stage uses the published processing time for National interest waiver, the largest category by pending volume. Its queue runs longer than that, which the I-140 calculator sets out.

You control

Recruitment and filing

The recruitment window and the filing dates are the only stages an employer paces. Missing one restarts the case.

DOL controls

The two queues

The prevailing wage determination and the PERM decision move at DOL's published pace, oldest first.

USCIS and State control

The petition and the number

The I-140 runs on USCIS's queue. The visa number depends on the bulletin, which is why that stage carries no figure.

Prevailing wage queue

How many requests sit ahead of yours.

Open

Your deadlines

Every deadline in your case.

Open

PERM decision

When DOL is likely to reach your month.

Open

I-140 queue

How deep the petition backlog is.

Open

Common questions

How long does an employment-based green card take?
The labor certification and petition stages together run a bit over two years on current published figures. After that comes the wait for a visa number, which depends on category and country of birth and for some applicants is longer than everything before it combined. Any single total that covers all of it hides that variation.
Which parts of the process can an employer actually control?
The recruitment window and the filing window, and that’s roughly two months of the total. Both are fixed arithmetic on the prevailing wage determination date, and both restart the case if they’re missed. Everything else is queue time at DOL or USCIS.
Why is there no number of months on the visa bulletin stage?
Because a cutoff date is a position, not a length of time. The stage shows the actual final action cutoffs from the newest bulletin held here, which is the measured fact. Turning one into “you will wait N months” would need a rate of advance for your category and country and a promise it holds, and cutoffs go backwards as well as forwards. The priority date calculator shows how each cutoff has moved instead, and how fast.
How do the four stages connect?
PERM certifies that no willing US worker was available. The I-140 establishes that the job and the worker qualify, and it sets or preserves the priority date. The visa bulletin decides when that priority date can be used, which is what governs the I-485. And the I-485 inventory says how many people are already holding a place in front of you in your category and country. The first two are queues you can be told a duration for; the third is a queue whose length nobody publishes and whose direction can reverse.
Does premium processing shorten the whole timeline?
It shortens one stage. Premium processing applies to the I-140 only, so it does nothing for the prevailing wage queue, the recruitment window, the PERM decision, or the wait for a visa number.

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

Processing times: DOL FLAG (flag.dol.gov/processingtimes) · data through Aug 28, 2026 · daily

Visa bulletin: State Dept via Internet Archive; gaps via permtrack.app mirror · data through Sep 2026 · monthly

I-140 times: USCIS processing-times page (egov.uscis.gov), dated mirror · data through Aug 17, 2026 · checked on update; uscis revises monthly

The rules behind these numbers

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