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PERM processing time calculator

Estimate when the Department of Labor will decide your case, from DOL's own queue figures and its published record of decided cases.

When will DOL decide my PERM?

Pick the month DOL received your ETA-9089. Every figure comes from DOL's own published data.

The month is read straight from the number. Nothing is looked up and nothing is stored.

Most likely

Around November 2026

Likely decision window: November 2026

One model has enough published data to answer for this month.

10 of about 12 months elapsed

DOL pace

644

decisions per working day, last 28

Queue is at

November 2025

DOL analyst review, 2026-08-28

Your month

0

months away: the queue is at your month

Queue position

DOL is working on your filing month now

DOL's analyst review queue is working November 2025, as of 2026-08-28.

How far DOL has got through each month

DOL is visibly working October 2024 to August 2026: those months have decisions in them and are not finished. Months above are done, months below have not been reached.

Cases ahead of you

5,122

still undecided, filed before November 2025

  1. June 2023 100% 17
  2. July 2023 100% 2
  3. August 2023 100% 0
  4. September 2023 100% 0
  5. October 2023 100% 1
  6. November 2023 100% 0
  7. December 2023 100% 0
  8. January 2024 100% 1
  9. February 2024 100% 0
  10. March 2024 100% 1
  11. April 2024 100% 3
  12. May 2024 100% 41
  13. June 2024 100% 27
  14. July 2024 100% 34
  15. August 2024 99% 97
  16. September 2024 99% 106
  17. October 2024 98% 191
  18. November 2024 97% 286
  19. December 2024 96% 369
  20. January 2025 97% 222
  21. February 2025 97% 160
  22. March 2025 98% 173
  23. April 2025 96% 310
  24. May 2025 96% 311
  25. June 2025 95% 517
  26. July 2025 95% 472
  27. August 2025 95% 529
  28. September 2025 93% 971
  29. October 2025! 83% 281
  30. November 2025 12% 13,173
  31. December 2025 3% 14,383
  32. January 2026 3% 11,128
  33. February 2026 3% 5,203
  34. March 2026 3% 6,698
  35. April 2026 3% 6,720
  36. May 2026 5% 8,131
  37. June 2026 3% 9,856
  38. July 2026 2% 8,943
  39. August 2026 2% 7,559
Ahead of yours Your month Filed after yours Columns: share of the month decided, then cases still pending.

One month is marked because far fewer cases were filed in it than in the months either side: October 2025 holds 1,616 against a neighbouring average of 14,332. That is what the records contain, not a gap in them.

13,173 still undecided in November 2025: 13,111 in analyst review, 55 answering a request for information, 1 under appeal, and 6 in none of those three. A case in a request for information or an audit is out of filing order, and DOL publishes those queues separately.

Pending counts: flag.dol.gov/recaptcha/caseStatus (DOL, direct). DOL's own disclosure files carry a decision date on every record and no pending rows at all, so a count of what is still in front of you cannot be read from them.

DOL's published average

November 2026

DOL reports an average of 372 calendar days to a determination. That average is taken over cases decided recently, so audited and long-running cases pull it up.

Source: DOL FLAG processing times, as of 2026-08-28

How fast the queue is moving

October 2023 to June 2026 (30 months of queue in 32 months of calendar)

Nov 2022May 2024Nov 2025Oct 2023Jun 2024Feb 2025Sep 2025Jun 2026

The solid line is the filing month DOL was deciding in each month across the bottom. The dashed line is your filing month, November 2025. The queue reaches you where the solid line meets it.

Reconstructed from determination dates in DOL's disclosure files. DOL publishes today's position but keeps no history, so this series can’t be read from DOL directly.

What this can’t tell you

  • DOL is still working through 2025-11. Cases decided first are the quickest ones, so the raw timings of those already decided would read far too optimistically for the rest of the month.
  • DOL does not decide cases in strict order. An audit, supervised recruitment, or a request for information adds months, and none of them are predictable from a filing date.
Cohort figures are computed from 373,939 decided cases in DOL's disclosure files (PERM_Disclosure_Data_FY2026_Q3.xlsx, PERM_Disclosure_Data_FY2025_Q4.xlsx, PERM_Disclosure_Data_New_Form_FY2024_Q4.xlsx, PERM_Disclosure_Data_FY2024_Q4.xlsx). Queue movement is measured across 6 months of determinations, January 2026 to June 2026.

Get notified when DOL reaches your month

We’ll email you when the analyst-review queue reaches the month your case was filed. It isn’t a newsletter and nothing else follows it.

The month is the only thing that decides when we write to you. You confirm by email first, so an address can’t be signed up by someone who doesn’t control it, and one click opts out.

Common questions

How accurate is a PERM processing time estimate?
It’s a forecast over a queue, not a deadline, so it’s wrong by some margin every time. It’s best read as a range that narrows as DOL gets closer to your filing month. Public PERM estimators currently disagree with each other by around nine months on the same filing date, mostly because they assume different things about how fast DOL is moving.
Why do you show more than one number?
Because they measure different things. DOL's published average looks backwards at cases it has already closed, which drags it up with audited and long-running ones. A queue-advance figure looks forwards from how fast the queue is moving now.
Does DOL decide PERM cases in the order they were filed?
Broadly, but not strictly. DOL works through filing months in order and goes alphabetically by employer name within a month. An audit, supervised recruitment, or a request for information takes a case out of that order and adds months, and none of those are predictable from a filing date.
My filing month has already passed and I have no decision. What does that mean?
It usually means the case is in audit, in supervised recruitment, or waiting on a response to a request for information. Those run on their own queues, which DOL publishes separately from analyst review.

The deadlines on your side of the process are fixed

Nobody can tell you exactly when DOL will decide. The recruitment window, the quiet period, the filing window and the I-140 deadline are arithmetic on your prevailing wage determination, and getting one wrong restarts the case.

Work out your deadlines

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

The rules behind these numbers

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