Geography, vintage and the underlying survey · Wage year 2026-27
Where the DOL wage data comes from, and the OEWS survey behind it
Two federal agencies stand behind every prevailing wage figure. One runs the survey. The other turns it into a wage table with four levels and publishes it once a year.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics runs the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, a large survey of employer establishments that collects employment and wage data by occupation and geography. It was called the Occupational Employment Statistics survey for most of its life and the older abbreviation, OES, still appears throughout the immigration wage files. The occupation list inside the wage archive is literally named oes_soc_occs.csv.
The Office of Foreign Labor Certification takes that wage data and turns it into the tables used for immigration filings: one row per area and occupation, with four wage levels, a mean, and the flag that says whether the row was surveyed locally. That file is published once a year and is what everything on this site reads.
What the survey measures
- Wages paid by establishments to workers in an occupation, reported by the employer rather than the worker.
- A geographic breakdown built on metropolitan and non-metropolitan area definitions.
- An occupational breakdown built on the Standard Occupational Classification, at the detailed six-digit level where the sample supports it.
- Straight-time pay. Bonuses, equity, overtime premiums and most of what makes a technology offer look large are outside what the survey captures.
That last point explains most of the distance between a prevailing wage and a market offer. The survey is measuring a narrower thing than a compensation package, and it’s measuring it across every employer in the occupation rather than across the ones a candidate would consider.
What it doesn’t measure
The survey has no view on seniority within an occupation, on employer size, on industry within an area, or on the specific skills a job needs. The four wage levels are the mechanism that stands in for seniority, and they’re derived from the survey distribution rather than reported by anyone. How that derivation behaves is set out in How the four wage levels are determined.
It also can’t report an estimate for every occupation in every area. Where the sample is too thin, the figure gets borrowed from a broader geography, and the row is flagged. In this build, 89 of 2,367 cells carry such a flag. The mechanics are in What GeoLvl means, and when a wage figure is imputed.
The chain, end to end
| Step | Who | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Collect wages from establishments | Bureau of Labor Statistics | OEWS estimates by occupation and area |
| Build the four-level wage table | Office of Foreign Labor Certification | ALC_Export.csv, 449,440 rows |
| Publish the archive | Office of Foreign Labor Certification | OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, effective July 1, 2026 |
| Issue a determination on request | National Prevailing Wage Center | A determination on Form ETA-9141 |
| File and attest | Employer | A certified Labor Condition Application |
Chain as published by the two agencies. Row and file counts computed from OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year 2026-27.
Only the last two steps involve any employer. The first three are finished before a case starts, which is why a prevailing wage argument is rarely an argument about the wage: it’s an argument about the occupation code, the area, or the level. Those are the three inputs an employer actually controls, and they’re handled in SOC codes, and how a job maps to one, Area of intended employment, and why the county matters more than the city and How the four wage levels are determined.
The counts here come from the 2026-27 archive: 449,440 wage rows, 848 occupation codes and 530 areas. This site uses 60 occupations and 40 areas of that, chosen by certified filing volume in FY2025 Q1 to Q4. Every file, its publisher and its cadence is listed in Sources: every dataset behind these figures.
Computed from the OFLC LCA disclosure data, FY2025 Q1 to Q4, certified H-1B filings only.
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.
- The wage year calendar, and when the figures change. When the figures change, what happens to a case that straddles the rollover, and how to date a number.
All 24 guides are indexed at Guides. Wage figures throughout are read from ALC_Export.csv, wage year 2026-27.