The filing itself · Wage year 2026-27
Full time versus part time, and how the wage is stated
The wage tables publish an hourly rate. Everything else, including the annual salary on an offer letter, is arithmetic performed on top of it, and the arithmetic is where part-time filings go wrong.
The Office of Foreign Labor Certification publishes prevailing wages as hourly figures. Annual figures are hourly multiplied by 2,080, which is 40 hours across 52 weeks, and that’s the convention the department's own wage search results use. Every annual figure on this site is computed that way and none of them is typed in.
| Level | Hourly | Annual at 2,080 hours |
|---|---|---|
| Level I | $52.81 | $109,845 |
| Level II | $66.21 | $137,717 |
| Level III | $79.61 | $165,589 |
| Level IV | $93.01 | $193,461 |
Software Developers in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
Full-time positions
For a full-time position the Labor Condition Application states the offered wage as a rate with a unit, most often a yearly salary, and the check is straightforward: convert both sides to the same unit and confirm the offer clears the prevailing figure. A salaried employee has to be paid the salary, not an hourly equivalent that varies with the week.
Part-time positions
A part-time filing has to say so, and it has to state the hours. The form asks for a range, and the range is a promise in both directions: the employer is representing what the person will actually work. The wage obligation then attaches to those hours. An employee working 20 hours a week is owed the required hourly rate for 20 hours, not an annual salary computed as though the year were full time.
Two errors recur. The first is stating an annual salary on a part-time filing without stating hours, which leaves the obligation undefined. The second is stating a wide hours range, from a small number to full time, and then paying at the bottom of it while working the person near the top. The range on the form isn’t a disclaimer.
When the work stops
The rule people most often haven’t heard, and this is our reading of 20 CFR 655.731 rather than a quotation from it: an employer owes the required wage for nonproductive time that results from the employer's own decision or from the worker lacking a license or permit. Lack of work is the employer's decision. Training, a slow quarter and a gap between projects are all periods the wage obligation continues through.
The obligation doesn’t extend to nonproductive time at the worker's own request, such as unpaid leave taken voluntarily, and it doesn’t survive a bona fide termination effected in the way the regulations require. Between those two poles there’s a great deal of ground, and it’s the ground most benching complaints are fought on.
This is a reading, not a quotationThe nonproductive-time rule above is our summary of a regulation with more structure than a paragraph can carry. Read 20 CFR 655.731 itself before relying on it. Only the Department of Labor decides whether an obligation has been met.
Checking your own figure
To check a salary against a published prevailing wage, divide the annual salary by 2,080 and compare hourly against hourly, or multiply the published hourly figure by 2,080 and compare annual against annual. Don’t mix. For Software Developers in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ at Level II, $66.21 an hour is $137,717 a year, and an offer stated at anything below that clears nothing.
The figure has to be the right one before the arithmetic means anything: the right occupation, the right area, the right wage year and the right level. Those are the fields covered in Reading an LCA: the fields that matter, and the step-by-step version for a visa holder checking their own pay is How to check whether you're being paid correctly as a visa holder. Across the 60 occupations here, the certified filing record for FY2025 Q1 to Q4 is the evidence of how employers actually stated these figures.
Computed from the OFLC LCA disclosure data, FY2025 Q1 to Q4, certified H-1B filings only.
More in the filing itself
- Reading an LCA: the fields that matter. The eight or so fields on Form ETA-9035 that carry the wage promise, and how to check each one.
- What an LCA actually certifies, and what it doesn’t. The narrow thing certification establishes, and the four things it leaves entirely open.
- The prevailing wage determination request, Form ETA-9141. The form that gets you a figure the department issued, when it’s required, and what it buys.
- Using a private wage survey instead of the OES figure. When an alternative survey is allowed, what it has to look like, and why most commercial data fails.
All 24 guides are indexed at Guides. Wage figures throughout are read from ALC_Export.csv, wage year 2026-27.