Proffered Wage Must Exceed State’s Minimum Wage, Not Just the Prevailing Wage (Federal)

As DOL continues to experience delays in issuing PWD and adjudicating PERM applications, employers must be careful when setting the proposed wage during the PERM process. It must exceed not just the prevailing wage as set by DOL but also exceed the state's (where worksite is located) minimum wage. You do not want to wait 1.5 to 2 years for the PERM to be certified only to find that the I-140 was...

Prevailing Wage Determinations Have Slowed Down; FIFO No Longer a Certainty

Update January 30, 2023 Just received a batch of prevailing wage determinations (PWD). It seems DOL is issuing determinations of wage requests filed in July 2022. We also got back PWDs of our earliest requests that have been pending since April 2022. No pending wage requests filed before July 2022. Update January 10, 2023 We are receiving PWDs that were filed in June 2022. However, we have some...

Wages Get Updated on July 1, 2021

Every year on July 1st, wages get updated. It may go up or down. But generally, changes are minor compared to previous years. To find the wages for the current year and previous years, employers may visit the wage library. In our experience, wages sometimes do change substantially from one year to the next. The example below shows the wage for a Financial Analyst decreasing from $56,098 in 2019...

New Prevailing Wage Request Form and Other Updates from DOL

The new Form ETA-9141, Application for Prevailing Wage Determination is set to go live on May 3, 2021. DOL held a webinar on April 27, 2021, regarding the new changes to the form. A presentation slide may be downloaded here. Any saved drafts that haven't been submitted will be deleted on May 3, 2021. Other updates include: Processing time for PERM and prevailing wage determination is not...

DOL Announces Accommodations for Employers in Texas and Oklahoma

DOL’s OFLC has released a FAQ regarding the extent of its accommodations for employers in Texas and Oklahoma who were impacted by the recent weather disaster. Accommodations include, for example, deadline flexibility and guidance relating to unintended changes in worksite. Anyone in these states who has on-going cases relating to PERM, labor certification, prevailing wage request, H-2A, H-2B,...

DOL Accepts Request to Re-Issue Wage Determination until February 8, 2021

Employers may now request reissuance of Prevailing Wage Determination PWD, issued from October 8, 2020 through December 4, 2020, which reflected a much higher wage based on the wage methodology used pursuant to an interim final rule which is no longer in effect. The deadline to request reissuance is February 8, 2021. The request must be based on an emergency situation which may be the following:...