Labor certification (PERM)The Department of Labor process in which an employer shows that no qualified U.S. worker is available for a position, required for most EB-2 and EB-3 petitions.See it in the glossary is the mandatory first step for most employer-sponsored green cards, and it asks something specific of the employer: not a promise to hire a foreign worker, but proof that no qualified, willing and available U.S. worker exists for the job at the wage the position requires. Understanding what that proof actually involves changes how an employer should plan the hire.
What the Department of Labor is actually certifying
PERM stands for Program Electronic Review Management, and it is run by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, not USCIS. Before an employer can file most EB-2 or EB-3 immigrant petitions, the DOL must certify to USCIS that hiring the foreign worker will not displace an available U.S. worker and will not undercut U.S. wages or working conditions in that occupation and area. This certification, not a job offer or a petition, is what PERM produces. USCIS still separately reviews and approves the immigrant petition itself after certification.
Step one: the prevailing wage determination
Before any recruitment can begin, the employer must request a Prevailing Wage Determination from the DOL’s National Prevailing Wage Center, using Form ETA-9141. The PWD sets the minimum wage the employer must offer and later pay for the position, based on the job’s duties, requirements, skill level and geographic location. Once issued, a PWD is valid for between 90 days and one year, and the recruitment campaign and eventual PERM filing must both occur while it is still valid. The wage offered can be raised later but cannot be lowered below the PWD once the worker obtains the green card and begins the sponsored role.
Step two: proving the market was tested
PERM recruitment is not a hiring search for the strongest applicant. It is a structured test of whether a minimally qualified U.S. worker was available and interested, using the job’s actual stated requirements. For most professional occupations, the required campaign includes a 30-day job order with the State Workforce Agency, two Sunday print advertisements in a newspaper of general circulation, a notice of filing posted at the worksite, and at least three additional recruitment methods drawn from a list set by DOL regulation, such as the employer’s own website, a job search website, campus recruiting, or a trade or professional organization. Every U.S. applicant who responds must be considered in good faith and, if rejected, the employer must document a lawful, job-related reason.
Step three: filing Form ETA-9089
Once recruitment is complete, the employer files Form ETA-9089 electronically through the DOL’s Foreign Labor Application Gateway system. The form summarizes the job opportunity, the recruitment conducted and the foreign worker’s qualifications. There is no DOL filing fee for the PERM application itself, though the employer is responsible for attorney costs and the cost of the recruitment activities, such as ad placement. The employer, not the worker, is the filer and bears these costs; DOL regulations do not allow the worker to pay them.
If the case is audited
DOL selects a share of PERM filings for audit, either at random or because something in the filing raises a question. An audited employer must produce its full recruitment file, including every advertisement, the job order printout, proof the notice of filing was posted, and its documented reasons for rejecting any U.S. applicants, generally within 30 days and with extensions rarely granted. A weak response can lead to an order of supervised recruitment, where the employer restarts the process under direct DOL oversight, or to denial. An audit response, even a strong one, typically adds several months to a year to the timeline.
How long employers should plan for
There is no Premium processingAn optional USCIS service, requested on Form I-907 with an additional fee, that sets a fixed time frame for USCIS to act on certain petitions and applications. Within that time USCIS must issue an approval, denial, request for evidence or notice of intent to deny, or open a fraud investigation. It speeds up when USCIS acts, not the standard the case must meet, and only some forms and categories are eligible.See it in the glossary for PERM, and the timeline runs entirely on DOL’s schedule. Recent DOL data show analyst review alone averaging 336 days for non-audited cases. Adding the prevailing wage determination and the recruitment period before filing, employers should generally plan for the full process, from PWD request to certification, to run 18 months or longer, and considerably longer if the case is audited. DOL has proposed changes intended to modernize the process, but as of this writing that proposal remains under White House review and is not yet in effect.
Employers should also build slack into hiring plans around cases the DOL flags for other reasons. Filing suspensions tied to individual employer reviews, such as the ones DOL applied to two large employers this September, show that a company’s own PERM filing history can affect its future cases independently of any single application’s merits.
What happens after certification
PERM certification is not the green card. It is the gate that allows the employer to file Form I-140Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, filed by an employer (or in some categories the worker) to classify a person under an employment-based category.See it in the glossary, the immigrant petition, with USCIS, which reviews the case independently and can still deny it. Depending on the worker’s green card category and country of birth, a visa number may or may not be immediately available even after I-140 approval, which determines whether the worker can move to the final step of Adjustment of statusThe process of applying for a green card from within the United States, rather than through a consulate abroad. Filed on Form I-485.See it in the glossary or Consular processingApplying for an immigrant visa at a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad, as an alternative to adjustment of status inside the United States.See it in the glossary right away. For a closer look at how the two most common PERM-based categories differ, see how EB-2 and EB-3 compare, and where an EB-2 National Interest Waiver can let a worker self-petition and skip PERM entirely.