How our predictions work
Our predictor uses only public U.S. Department of Labor disclosure data. There is no black box — here is exactly what happens when you enter a case number or a date.
1. We find your received month and employer letter
PERM case numbers encode the received date (format G-XXX-YYDDD-NNNNNN, where YY is the year and DDD is the day of the year). We pair that month with your employer's first letter, which is how the DOL roughly batches review.
2. We measure the queue ahead of you
For your letter and received month, we count how many cases are still pending (no decision yet). That approximates how many cases sit ahead of you.
3. We measure the recent processing rate
We look at how many cases for your letter have been decided recently and over what span, giving a cases-per-day rate.
4. We estimate a date range
Days remaining ≈ queue ahead ÷ processing rate. We center a range on that date and widen it with a confidence band. Confidence is higher (≈80%) when we have data for your exact letter and month, lower (≈60%) when we fall back to the nearest month.
This is an estimate, not a promise. Audits, policy changes, and DOL workload all shift timelines. Try the predictor →