wagelevels

Wage year 2026-27

Sources

Six files, two publishers, both federal. Here's what each one is, what it contributes, when it's republished, and where to get it yourself.

CadenceThe OFLC wage file is republished once a year, on 1 July. The LCA disclosure workbook is republished quarterly, and DOL's posting lags the end of each federal fiscal quarter by weeks rather than days. Check the vintage in the table before you cite anything here.

The wage files

All three come from the same archive, OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, published by the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification.

FileWhat it isRows
ALC_Export.csvThe wage table. One row per area and SOC code, carrying Levels I to IV, the mean, and the GeoLvl flag that says whether the wage was surveyed for that area or imputed from a broader one.449,440
Geography.csvThe area definitions. Maps every county and town to one OFLC area of intended employment, with the area name and state. This is what turns a worksite into an area code.530 areas
oes_soc_occs.csvThe occupation list. 2018 SOC codes with their official titles and descriptions, which is the text used to check you've picked the right code.848

Publisher: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification. Cadence: annual, republished 1 July. License: US Government work, no copyright. Archive: OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip. Search interface: flag.dol.gov wage search. ALC_Export.csv, OFLC_Wages_2026-27.zip, wage year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027.

The Appendix A workbook

A separate OFLC workbook, and the reason this site can say anything about levels at all. Three sheets get used: the Appendix A list of professional occupations, the O*NET Job Zone per SOC, and the usual entry education per SOC. Job Zone sets how much experience is ordinary for an occupation, and the education column sets what counts as a requirement above the usual entry level. Both feed the worksheet.

Publisher: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification, with the Job Zone and education values originating from O*NET. Cadence: revised with the guidance rather than on a fixed calendar. License: US Government work. Landing page: flag.dol.gov wage data.

The LCA disclosure workbook

The quarterly record of every Labor Condition Application DOL processed, one row per filing, with case status, visa class, SOC code, worksite, wage level and offered wage. It's the only public evidence of what employers actually file, which is why the FY2025 Q1 to Q4 extract decides which occupations and areas get pages here.

MeasureCount
Certified H-1B filings analysed103,285
Of those, filings whose county resolves to an OFLC area10,792

Publisher: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification. Cadence: quarterly. License: US Government work. Landing page: dol.gov foreign labor certification performance data. Period used: FY2025 Q1 to Q4. The gap between those two counts is a limitation and it's explained on methodology.

Two notes on handling

DOL has shipped the disclosure workbook under a misspelled filename, Dislclosure, on some quarters. Anything fetching these files automatically has to try both spellings or it will 404 on the wrong quarter and look like the data disappeared.

The wage archive and the disclosure workbooks sit on different hosts with different access behavior. flag.dol.gov serves the wage archive without trouble. www.dol.gov sits behind a filter that rejects ordinary scripted requests, so the disclosure fetch is the fragile part of the pipeline and it's the one most likely to be stale.

License

Both publishers are US federal agencies and their published data is a US Government work, so it isn't under copyright in the United States. You can download it, redistribute it and build on it. See data for the direct download route, which doesn't require going through this site.