Current Green Card PERM Prevailing Wage Determination(PWD) Processing Times, Timeline, Trends

Applying for employment based Green Card involves many steps. Once the employer formulates the job duties and job's minimum requirements, they need to go through Prevailing Wage Determination (PWD). PWD is filed with the US Department of Labor (DOL). Due to the complexity of the PWD process, the processing times of PWD can be long similar to PERM processing times.

Prevailing Wage Determination(PWD) is an important step as it determines the minimum wage/salary that the employer/company needs to pay the employee once they get the green card. For issuing the PWD, US DOL considers the job duties, job requirements and the geographic location of the job to determine the minimum wage that the employer needs to pay for a job. Employers need to file Form ETA-9141 either online using FLAG System or offline with National Prevailing Wage Center (NPWC), which is part of US DOL.

What is OEWS in context of PWD? :OEWS stands for Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). This is a program run by US DOL and used as a wage source for issuing PWDs. 90% of the PWD applications use OEWS as the wage source. Remaining 10% use Non-OEWS sources that can include Davis-Bacon Act (DBA), Collective bargaining agreements (CBA), Service Contract Act(SCA), and others. Also, OES or OEWS both indicate the same, some use OES in context of PWD.

OEWS Receipt Date: All PWD applications have a receipt date, which is basically the date US DOL received the PWD application from the employer. The OEWS Receipt date means that the PWD applications submitted with US DOL used OEWS as the wage source. The below PWD processing time month & year listed under OEWS receipt date indicates what PWD receipt dates US DOL is currently processing for applications that used OEWS as the wage source. It can be that month or before month as well.

Non-OEWS Receipt Date: The Non-OEWS Receipt date means that the PWD applications used Non-OEWS Wage sources such as DBA, CBA, SCA, etc. as the wage source. The below month & year listed under Non-OEWS receipt date indicates what PWD receipt dates US DOL is currently processing for applications that used Non-OEWS as wage sources. It can be that month or before month as well.

Below are the current US Department of Labor published PWD processing times. We update this page everyday to get the latest snapshot of PWD processing times based on both US DOL data as well as the daily feed data we get for PWD filings and PWD applications. Also, the bottom of the page has more information on the overall PWD process and commonly asked questions around PWD.

Why is PWD is important? : The fundamental idea behind getting PWD issued by US DOL is to ensure that the foreign workers are paid on-par with current market wages and similar to a US Citizen. This is to protect the foreign workers from employers who may try to take advantage.