Geography, vintage and the underlying survey · Wage year 2026-27
The wage year calendar, and when the figures change
The wage tables are republished once a year and take effect on 1 July. A figure without a wage year attached to it’s not a usable figure.
The Office of Foreign Labor Certification republishes its prevailing wage tables annually, effective 1 July. The current file, ALC_Export.csv inside OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, is effective July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. Every figure on this site belongs to that vintage and is labelled with it.
That single annual step is the most under-appreciated fact about prevailing wages. The figures don’t drift through the year. They sit still for twelve months and then move all at once, which means a number that was correct on 30 June can be wrong on 1 July without anybody doing anything.
What the calendar looks like
| Dataset | Cadence | This build |
|---|---|---|
| OFLC prevailing wage tables | Annual, effective 1 July | 2026-27 |
| LCA disclosure data | Quarterly | FY2025 Q1 to Q4 |
| Area definitions (Geography.csv) | With the wage archive | 530 areas |
| Occupation list (oes_soc_occs.csv) | With the wage archive | 848 SOC codes |
Cadences as published by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification. Counts computed from OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip.
A case that straddles the rollover
The general shape, and this is our reading of how the published rules operate rather than a quotation from any of them: a prevailing wage determination issued by the Department of Labor states its own validity period on its face, and a filing made inside that period may rely on it even after the tables have moved. A figure pulled straight from the published tables without a determination, by contrast, has no validity period of its own beyond the wage year it belongs to.
The practical version for anyone running a caseload: know, for every open matter, which wage year the figure came from and whether a determination is backing it. Cases prepared in May and filed in July are the ones that go wrong, and they go wrong silently, because the old number still looks like a number.
Check the determination, not the tableWhere a determination exists, its stated validity period governs the filing window. Don’t infer a validity period from the wage year. Only the Department of Labor issues determinations and only the determination itself states what it’s good for.
The obligation doesn’t roll over
A new wage year doesn’t raise the wage owed under an already-certified application. The application locked in a wage, and that wage continues to bind for its validity period. New figures matter for new filings, for extensions, and for amendments, which is why Amended petitions and material change and the rollover interact more often than people expect.
The separate obligation that does move is the internal one. An employer owes the higher of the prevailing wage and its own actual wage for comparable staff, and the actual wage moves whenever the employer's own pay scales move. That’s covered in Prevailing wage versus actual wage, and the two-part obligation.
Dating a figure you’ve been given
A wage figure with no vintage attached isn’t evidence of anything. When a number arrives in an email, the questions are which wage year, which occupation code, which area code, and which level. All four have to be present before the number can be checked. Every figure published here carries all four, and the whole build is described in Sources: every dataset behind these figures and downloadable through Data: get the source files yourself. Changes to this site's own data and methods are logged in Updates: data refreshes and methodology changes.
For a concrete example of what a single wage year holds: for Software Developers in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, the 2026-27 file gives Level I at $109,845 and Level IV at $193,461 a year. Those two figures won’t move again until the next 1 July.
Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
More in geography, vintage and the underlying survey
- Area of intended employment, and why the county matters more than the city. How an address becomes an area code, and what a county boundary is worth in dollars.
- What GeoLvl means, and when a wage figure is imputed. The flag that says whether your wage is a local survey or a borrowed one, and what to do when it’s borrowed.
- Where the DOL wage data comes from, and the OEWS survey behind it. The survey underneath the tables, what it measures, and the limits that come with it.
All 24 guides are indexed at Guides. Wage figures throughout are read from ALC_Export.csv, wage year 2026-27.