Recent DOL Statistics
July 24, 2014 | Tags: DOL
The Department of Labor Office of Foreign Labor Certification recently released statistics on fiscal year through 3rd Quarter (10/1/2013 through 6/30/2014) permanent labor certification applications, requests for prevailing wage and labor condition applications. Below are highlights from these reports, which can be found here.
PERM Labor Certifications
The DOL received 20,173 PERM labor certification applications in its Q3, up 15% from the same period in 2013. Computer and mathematical positions comprised 56% of the total PERMs filed year to date. California employers filed 24% of the total number of PERMS filed year to date, with Texas employers filing 10%, New York 8%, and New Jersey and Washington both at 7%. The majority of employees being sponsored come from India (56%), with China at 7%, Canada at 5%, South Korea at 4% and the Philippines at 3%.
Prevailing Wage Requests
In Q3, the DOL reports that it received 2,016 prevailing wage requests in connection with H-1B filings, and 31,719 prevailing wage requests related to PERM filings. The top 5 H-1B occupations listed on these requests were biochemists and biophysicists (14%), medical scientists not including epidemiologists (6%), physicians and surgeons (5%), software application developers (4%), and internists (3%). The top 5 PERM occupations were software application developers (27%), computer systems analysts (7%), systems software developers (6%), computer and information systems managers (4%) and electronics engineers (4%).
Current DOL processing times for PERM and prevailing wage requests can be found at icert.doleta.gov.
Labor Condition Applications
From October 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014, the DOL received 400,671 labor condition applications (LCAs). Of these, 101,629 were received in Q3. Q2 numbers, when employers were most likely preparing for fiscal year H-1B filings, reached 231,401. Many of the LCAs may have been used for H-1B extensions of stay. The vast majority of occupations listed in the certified LCAs were in computer industry positions. Mirroring the PERM data, the top states where LCA employers were located were California, Texas, New York and New Jersey. Illinois rounded out the top 5.
