How a determination is built · Wage year 2026-27
What the prevailing wage is, and why it exists
A prevailing wage is a floor under one job, in one place, for one wage year. It’s not what the job pays, not what the market pays, and not a number anyone negotiates.
The prevailing wage is the minimum an employer may offer a foreign worker for a particular occupation in a particular geographic area. It exists because Congress conditioned several employment-based immigration programs on a wage promise: the employer attests that hiring on a visa won’t undercut what similar work already pays where the work happens. The Immigration and Nationality Act carries that condition, and the Department of Labor operates the machinery underneath it.
Two things follow from that framing, and most confusion about prevailing wages comes from missing them. First, it’s a floor and only a floor. Nothing stops an employer paying well above it, and in high-volume occupations most do. Second, it’s not one number. Every occupation and area combination carries four figures, one per wage level, and which of the four binds depends on how the employer describes the job.
What one determination actually looks like
Take a real cell. Software Developers, SOC 15-1252, in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. The wage file carries four hourly figures for that pairing, and the site annualizes them at 2,080 hours, which is the convention the Department of Labor's own wage search results use.
| 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 |
Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
The gap between the bottom and the top of that cell is $83,616 a year on what’s nominally the same occupation in the same city. That spread is usually the largest single number in a filing, and it’s the reason How the four wage levels are determined matters more than the wage table itself.
What it measures, and what it doesn’t
The figures come out of a federal establishment survey of what employers actually pay, not out of job postings, offer letters or salary aggregators. That gives them a property no private benchmark has: they’re the same number for everyone, published in advance, and checkable. It also gives them a limitation. Survey data is retrospective and coarse. It has an occupation code where a job description has nuance, and it has a metropolitan area where a job has an address.
So the prevailing wage will often sit well below what the same job actually offers. Across the 85,935 certified H-1B filings in FY2025 Q1 to Q4 for the 60 occupations covered here, the plurality landed at Level II. For Software Developers specifically, the median wage employers offered was $140,000 a year, from 33,157 filings. Compare that against the four figures in the table above and the distance between "the floor" and "the going rate" is obvious.
Computed from the OFLC LCA disclosure data, FY2025 Q1 to Q4, certified H-1B filings only.
Why the place matters as much as the job
The same occupation in a different metropolitan area is a different number, and the difference isn’t small. At Level II, Software Developers runs from $187,075 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA down to $89,814 in Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR, across the 40 areas with a surveyed figure here. That’s a $97,261 swing on the same job title at the same level, decided by geography alone. Which geography applies is a technical question with a technical answer, covered in Area of intended employment, and why the county matters more than the city.
Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
Who uses which number
An attorney preparing a filing needs the figure for the specific occupation, area, wage year and level, and needs to be able to show where it came from if the file is ever examined. An HR reviewer needs to know whether an offer clears the floor before the requisition goes out, and whether a later promotion or relocation moves the floor. A visa holder needs to know which of the four figures was written on the filing that supports their status, because that’s the number the employer promised, and it’s a matter of public record.
The obligation isn’t only about this number, either. An employer owes the higher of the prevailing wage and its own internal actual wage for comparable staff, which is the subject of Prevailing wage versus actual wage, and the two-part obligation.
Where these figures come from
Every figure on this site is read out of ALC_Export.csv, the wage file inside OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, published by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification and effective for wage year 2026-27. Nothing is estimated, modelled or filled in. The build behind these pages covers 2,367 occupation and area cells drawn from 60 occupations and 40 metropolitan areas, selected by certified filing volume. The full derivation is in Methodology: how these prevailing wage figures are built, and the file itself is downloadable, which is the point of Data: get the source files yourself.
Computed from ALC_Export.csv in OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
More in how a determination is built
- How the four wage levels are determined. The step-up logic, plus the exact arithmetic relationship between the four figures.
- Job Zones, and how they set the experience baseline. Where the experience ceiling comes from, and why five years means different things in different occupations.
- 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.