A 14 October TechYorker analysis of the Department of Labor’s FLAG portal confirms what many corporate immigration teams already suspected: PERM labour-certification adjudications have barely budged. As of the 5 October snapshot, Analyst Review and Audit Review queues were both working on filings from December 2025, while average analyst adjudication time for decisions issued in August 2026 stood at 336 calendar days. The figures matter because PERM is the gateway to most EB-2 and EB-3 green cards. With the H-1B cap hit in record time again this year, employers are racing to secure immigrant status for key staff before six-year limits expire. A 336-day “average” means many cases still take a year or more—longer if selected for audit. TechYorker’s guide walks HR teams through using the public Case Status Search to pull individual filings, an increasingly urgent task after USCIS scrapped automatic EAD extensions (see story above). Without timely PERM approvals, workers can lose H-1B status or be forced abroad, jeopardising projects. Immigration counsel recommend filing PERM six months earlier than in pre-pandemic years and budgeting for potential supervised recruitment if audits spike. Employers also need to manage expectations: queue dates describe the oldest case month under review, not time remaining for a new filing. The next official update is due the first week of November; unless DOL allocates more examiner capacity, backlogs threaten to collide with FY 2027 visa-number retrogression, further complicating workforce planning.
Source: TechYorker
