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The PERM program (short for Program Electronic Review Management) is the most common avenue for employers to sponsor employees or prospective employees for permanent residence status (i.e., green card status). The U.S. Department of Labor has used this program since March 2005 to decide labor certification applications. In short, it is a procedure in which an employer undertakes a recruitment campaign — under the Labor Department's rules and regulations — to establish that there are no qualified U.S. workers to fill a permanent position that is being offered by the employer.
In outline, the employer obtains a prevailing wage determination for the position, carries out a prescribed program of recruitment to test the U.S. labor market, waits out the required period after that recruitment closes, and then files the labor certification application electronically with the Department of Labor. A certified application is the foundation for the immigrant petition that follows. The Labor Certification overview explains where this step fits within the wider green card process; the questions below answer the practical ones that come up along the way.
PERM reads like a checklist and behaves like a minefield. There is no mechanism for correcting an application once it has been filed, and no way to supplement the record with evidence the Department of Labor did not ask for. A wording choice made months earlier, a newspaper advertisement placed a week too early, or a rejected applicant whose resume was not documented carefully can each end a case. When that happens the remedy is usually to begin the entire recruitment again, at the employer's cost, with the priority date lost. Almost all of the work that determines the outcome happens before anything is submitted, and that is where we concentrate our effort.
The job description governs everything that follows. The stated requirements must be the employer's actual minimum requirements, not an aspirational profile and not a description reverse-engineered from the sponsored employee's resume. Requirements that exceed the normal expectations for the occupation must be justified by business necessity, and combinations of education and experience, alternative requirements, and foreign language requirements each carry their own documentation burdens. We work through the role with the employer at the outset so the description is both accurate and defensible.
The wage the Department of Labor assigns depends on how the position is classified and on the level of skill and independence the duties reflect, along with the location or locations where the work is performed. Positions involving multiple worksites, travel, or remote work raise questions that are easy to answer incorrectly. We prepare and track the wage request and advise on the consequences of the determination before recruitment begins, since the wage figure shapes both the recruitment and the employer's future obligations.
Recruitment for PERM is prescriptive. There is a state workforce agency job order, print advertising, an internal notice of the filing, and, for professional positions, additional recruitment steps drawn from a defined list. Each element has its own timing rules, and the sequence has to fit inside a window that opens and closes relative to the filing date. We build the recruitment calendar, review the text of every advertisement before it runs, and keep the evidence organized as it is generated rather than reconstructing it later.
Employers must consider U.S. applicants in good faith and may reject them only for lawful, job-related reasons tied to the stated requirements. Interviews are often necessary, and the reasons for each rejection must be recorded contemporaneously in a recruitment report. We advise on how applicants should be screened and interviewed, help distinguish a lawful rejection from one that will not survive review, and prepare the report and the underlying record.
An application may be selected for audit or directed into supervised recruitment, and audit responses carry firm deadlines. Supporting documentation has to be retained and produced on request. If an application is denied, the options include a request for reconsideration, an appeal to the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals, or refiling, and choosing among them involves weighing the strength of the record against the delay each path adds. We handle audit responses and appeals, and give the employer a candid assessment of which route is worth pursuing.
A PERM application rarely stands alone. Its timing interacts with the sponsored employee's nonimmigrant status, including the ability to extend H-1B status beyond the sixth year, with priority date strategy and visa bulletin movement, with the choice between preference categories, and with the ages of dependent children. Layoffs in the same occupation, corporate reorganizations, changes of worksite, and the rule that the employer bears the cost of the process all have to be accounted for. We keep the labor certification synchronized with the immigrant petition and the eventual permanent residence application so that one step does not undermine another.
Every PERM matter turns on details specific to the employer, the position and the individual, and those details are best discussed directly. If you are an employer considering sponsorship, or an employee whose employer is preparing a case, we would be glad to talk with you about how the process would apply to your situation. Contact us to arrange a consultation.
The employer pays. Under 20 CFR 656.12(b) the employer must bear the costs of obtaining the labor certification, including its own attorneys' fees and the recruitment and advertising the process requires, and it must not seek or receive payment of any kind from the worker for any activity related to obtaining the certification; payment is defined broadly and reaches wage concessions, deductions from salary or benefits, in-kind payments and free labor as well as cash. A worker may pay his or her own costs for separate counsel representing the worker individually, but where the same attorney represents both the employer and the worker, those costs must be borne by the employer. This is not a formality: evidence that an employer sought or received such payment is grounds for investigation and may be grounds for denial of the application, revocation of a certification already granted, or debarment.
There is no single figure, because the elapsed time is the sum of several stages, only some of which the employer controls. The sequence is fixed: the employer obtains the prevailing wage determination, carries out the prescribed recruitment, waits out the required period after that recruitment closes before the application may be filed, and then waits for the Department of Labor's decision. An audit adds substantially to that, and supervised recruitment adds more still. Current processing dates for each stage are published by the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification on its Foreign Labor Application Gateway, which is the place to check what the Department is working on at any given moment.
An audit is the Department of Labor's request that the employer prove what its application asserts — not a denial, and not a finding that anything is wrong. Some applications are selected randomly for quality control purposes, and nothing about a well-prepared case can prevent that; others are selected because of what the application itself shows, and the recurring patterns are a recent layoff, a family or ownership relationship between the worker and the employer, job requirements out of step with what the occupation normally calls for, and experience the worker gained with the sponsoring employer. The employer answers with its recruitment documentation within the period the audit letter sets, and a failure to answer within that period is itself a ground for denial (20 CFR 656.20). Where the Department wants more than documents, it can direct supervised recruitment, in which the Certifying Officer approves the advertisements and controls where and when they run.
Layoffs do not bar an application, but they add a documentation duty that has to be satisfied before filing. Under 20 CFR 656.17(k)(1), where the employer has laid off workers in the area of intended employment within six months of filing, in the occupation for which certification is sought or in a related occupation, the employer must document that it notified and considered all potentially qualified laid-off U.S. workers. The Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals reads that requirement strictly: the notice must be tied to the specific job opportunity and given in good faith, and a general invitation to watch for future openings, or a notice issued on the eve of filing, has not been accepted as meeting it. Both "layoff" and "related occupation" are defined terms under the rule rather than ordinary business usage, so whether a particular separation counts is a question worth working through before recruitment begins.
Generally, no. Under the actual minimum requirements rule at 20 CFR 656.17(i), where the worker is already employed by the sponsoring employer, the employer cannot require U.S. applicants to have training or experience beyond what the worker possessed when hired, so experience gained on the job with that employer generally cannot be used to qualify for the position being offered. The exception is narrow: experience gained with the employer in a position that was not substantially comparable to the one now offered may be counted, and "substantially comparable" is itself defined by reference to the proportion of the same duties performed. The reason for the rule is that the employer must genuinely require what it says it requires, since otherwise the recruitment tests the U.S. labor market against a standard the employer did not actually apply to its own hire.
There are three routes, and they are not interchangeable. The employer may ask the Certifying Officer to reconsider (20 CFR 656.24(g)), which is decided on documentation already properly within the record rather than on evidence created after the fact; it may request review by the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals within 30 days of the determination (20 CFR 656.26), where a denial is considered on the closed record and the submission is confined to legal argument and evidence that was already in it; or it may correct the defect and refile, which means fresh recruitment and a new filing. Which route fits turns on the nature of the defect, whether it is something the existing record already answers, something only legal argument can address, or something no argument can cure, and on the calendar the employer and the worker are working against.
The priority date is the date the Department of Labor accepted the labor certification application for processing, and it is that date the immigrant petition filed afterwards carries (8 CFR 204.5(d)). The certification itself is not a portable credential: it is valid only for the employer that obtained it, for the job opportunity and occupation set out in the application, and for the area of intended employment stated there (20 CFR 656.30(c)). Whether and how a priority date is retained through later stages of the permanent residence process depends on the immigrant petition that follows rather than on the labor certification, so a change of employer, category or circumstance is a question to work through on the specific facts.
Yes. Under 20 CFR 656.30(b), a labor certification granted by the Department of Labor expires unless the immigrant petition is filed in support of it with the Department of Homeland Security within 180 calendar days of the date the certification was granted. The 180 days run from the grant of the certification, not from the day it reaches the employer or its counsel, so the immigrant petition is normally prepared while the certification is still pending rather than after it arrives.
This page is general information about U.S. immigration law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration rules, numerical limits and procedures change often. The law described here was reviewed in August 2026; please confirm the current position, or contact us, before acting on anything on this page.