PERM Fiscal Year 2008 Statistics

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Foreign Labor Certification has released its October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008 (FY’08) statistics on PERM processing.  Although these are statistical estimates and not official results, the numbers are expected to be very close to the final official numbers.  We wrote about PERM’s FY’08 mid-year statistics in April.

There were approximately 90,039 PERM applications received throughout FY’08.  Of them, the vast majority, 84,876, were electronic submissions and only 5,163 were mailed in.   DOL completed a total of 61,997 case, of them 49,205 (79%) were certified; 10,729 (17%) were denied; and 2,063 (3%) were withdrawn.

The fact that  therewere more PERM cases filed throughout FY’08 than there were cases reviewed indicates that overall the backlog of PERM cases has increased.  The backlog increased by 28,042 cases during FY’08.  According to DOL, as of September 30, 2008, there are 40,200 active PERM cases, of which 57% are pending final review, 32% are being audited, 8% are subject to reconsideration/appeal.

Unfortunately, the PERM statistics do not seem to indicate relief from the increased PERM processing times.  When originally implemented, the PERM system was intended to have a standard turnaround time of between 30 and 60 days.  Unfortunately, this has grown to 180 days in many regular, non-audited PERM cases.