Pay, records and enforcement · Wage year 2026-27
What a public access file has to contain
The file has to be assembled quickly, kept for years, and handed over to anyone who asks. Most of it’s documents the employer already has. The wage explanation is the part that usually isn’t written down anywhere.
Read this firstThis is a computed reading of published federal data and published federal guidance, not legal advice. Only the Department of Labor issues prevailing wage determinations, and only the Department of Labor decides whether an obligation has been met. Where a rule below is our reading rather than a verbatim quotation, the text says so.
An employer filing a Labor Condition Application has to maintain a file that any member of the public can examine. Not a regulator, not the worker: anyone. It exists so that the attestations on the application can be checked by the people affected by them, and its location is stated on the application itself.
What goes in it
The list below is our reading of 20 CFR 655.760. It’s a summary, it compresses conditions, and the regulation is what governs. Read it before designing a file template.
- A copy of the certified Labor Condition Application.
- Documentation of the wage rate paid to the worker.
- A full explanation of the system the employer used to set the actual wage for the position, including the factors it uses and how they were applied here.
- Documentation of the prevailing wage: the source, the figure and how it was obtained.
- Documentation that the required notice was given, whether by posting or by electronic notification, and where.
- A summary of the benefits offered to workers in the same occupational classification, and an explanation of any differentiation.
- Where a corporate change has occurred, the documentation covering the successor entity's assumption of the obligations.
- Where the employer is H-1B dependent or a willful violator and the filing isn’t exempt-only, the additional documentation those attestations require.
When it has to exist
Quickly. The regulation requires the file to be available for public examination within a very short window after the application is filed, and to be retained for a defined period after the employment ends. Both are stated in the regulation and both are worth reading exactly rather than approximately, because "we were assembling it" isn’t a position anyone wants to argue from.
The item that’s usually missing
It’s almost never the certified application, and almost never the pay records. It’s the explanation of the actual wage system. Employers have pay bands, levelling frameworks and compensation committees, and very few of them have a written document that says how a specific visa holder was placed within that structure relative to comparable staff. That explanation is precisely what the required wage obligation turns on, as set out in Prevailing wage versus actual wage, and the two-part obligation.
The second thinnest item is the prevailing wage documentation. A figure with no provenance isn’t documentation. What makes it documentation is the occupation code, the area, the wage year, the level and the source together, which is why every figure on this site carries all five.
| Level | Hourly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| 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, SOC 15-1252, in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
What it’s not
It’s not the petition file. Immigration status documents, personnel records, tax records and anything else outside the list belong elsewhere, and putting them in a file that’s open to the public is its own problem. It’s also not a defense on its own: a complete file that documents a wage below the required wage documents a violation, which is the subject of What happens when the offered wage is below the prevailing wage.
For a visa holder
You can ask to see it, and so can anyone else. It contains the certified application that supports your status, which means it contains the wage that was promised and the level it was based on. What to do with that once you’ve it’s How to check whether you're being paid correctly as a visa holder, and how to read the form itself is Reading an LCA: the fields that matter.
More in pay, records and enforcement
- Prevailing wage versus actual wage, and the two-part obligation. The two figures, which one binds, and why the internal one is the one that moves.
- What happens when the offered wage is below the prevailing wage. How a shortfall arises, how it surfaces, and the range of consequences.
- Common wage level mistakes on filings. Ten recurring errors, what each one looks like on the form, and the check that catches it.
- How to check whether you're being paid correctly as a visa holder. Five inputs, one lookup, one comparison, and what to do if the numbers don’t meet.
All 24 guides are indexed at Guides. Wage figures throughout are read from ALC_Export.csv, wage year 2026-27.