How a determination is built · Wage year 2026-27
Job Zones, and how they set the experience baseline
The Job Zone is the reason a five-year requirement is unremarkable in one occupation and a step-up in another. It's an attribute of the occupation, and the employer doesn't get a say in it.
O*NET, the Department of Labor occupational database, assigns every occupation a Job Zone from 1 to 5. The zone summarises how much preparation the occupation ordinarily needs: education, training and experience together. It’s a property of the occupation. Nothing an employer writes in a job description changes it.
That matters for one reason. The experience step in a wage level determination asks whether the employer requires more experience than is ordinary for the occupation, and the Job Zone is what "ordinary" means.
The ceilings
Our reading of the Department of Labor prevailing wage guidance gives each zone an experience range, and a requirement above the top of that range is what registers as above the norm. Our step-by-step reading of that guidance drives the calculator on this site, and it hasn't yet been reconciled line by line against the current revision, so treat every derivation here as a model you can check rather than an answer you can rely on.
| Job Zone | Experience treated as ordinary | Occupations here |
|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 | Up to 3 months | 0 |
| Zone 2 | Up to 2 years | 0 |
| Zone 3 | Up to 4 years | 0 |
| Zone 4 | Up to 10 years | 41 |
| Zone 5 | Up to 10 years | 19 |
Zone ranges are our reading of the DOL ETA prevailing wage determination policy guidance. Occupation counts computed from the 60 occupations in this build.
Every occupation on this site sits in Zone 4 or Zone 5, which is what you would expect from a set chosen by H-1B filing volume: 41 in Zone 4 and 19 in Zone 5. The consequence is blunt. In a Zone 4 occupation such as Software Developers, a requirement of 10 years or less is ordinary and adds no step. In a Zone 5 occupation such as Lawyers, on our reading of the guidance the range runs past ten years, so an experience requirement almost never moves the level on its own.
Where this trips people up
An employer writes "5+ years required" into a Zone 4 requisition because that’s how the hiring manager described the role, and the requirement is inside the ordinary range, so it buys nothing. Another employer writes "12 years" into the same occupation, clears the ceiling, and has taken a step up without intending to. The job may be identical in substance. What differs is the sentence in the job description, and the job description is what the determination reads.
The second trap runs the other way. A requirement that sits inside the ceiling doesn’t make the position Level I. The experience step is one of several, and education, special requirements and supervision are each capable of moving the level on their own. A Zone 4 position with modest experience but a genuine license requirement and real supervisory duties isn’t an entry-level determination.
Job Zone and SVP
Job Zones are built on Specific Vocational Preparation, an older scale describing how long it takes to learn to do a job competently. O*NET publishes an SVP range alongside each zone. For the wage level determination the zone is the operative attribute, and SVP is useful mostly as the thing behind it when someone asks why an occupation sits where it does.
Checking the zone for a specific occupation
Each occupation page here states its Job Zone and its usual entry education in the strip under the headline. For Software Developers, that’s Zone 4 and Bachelor's degree. The full set is at All 60 occupations, and the occupation-specific figures for this one are at Software Developers prevailing wage by area.
The zone is only half the baseline. The other half is the education the occupation usually requires at entry, which is what Appendix A, and which occupations are on it governs, and both feed the step sequence set out in How the four wage levels are determined. To see how a specific experience requirement lands against a specific cell, the Prevailing wage calculator shows the step-by-step working rather than just the result.
Unverified worksheetThe experience ranges above are our reading of published guidance and haven’t been reconciled line by line against the current revision. The calculator on this site labels every derivation as an unverified model for the same reason.
More in how a determination is built
- What the prevailing wage is, and why it exists. The floor, what it measures, and the statutory reason it exists at all.
- How the four wage levels are determined. The step-up logic, plus the exact arithmetic relationship between the four figures.
- Appendix A, and which occupations are on it. The professional occupations list, what it does to the education step, and the name it gets confused with.
- SOC codes, and how a job maps to one. How the classification is structured, how duties drive the match, and the pairs that get confused.
All 24 guides are indexed at Guides. Wage figures throughout are read from ALC_Export.csv, wage year 2026-27.