The Department of Labor (DOL) issued a Federal Register notice proposing to further delay the effective date of the Final Rule, Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States, for a period of eighteen months or until November 14, 2022. The DOL has also proposed corresponding delays to the rule’s transition dates. The DOL invites public comment on the proposed delay on or before April 21, 2021.
Under the law, an employer must pay an H-1B visa holder the higher of the prevailing wage or actual wage paid to similar U.S. workers, and in the permanent residence context, the employer generally must pay at least the DOL-determined prevailing wage. DOL currently determines the prevailing wage by using data from the government’s Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) wage survey and using a mathematical formula to create four levels of wages for each occupation. The regulation about would change how DOL's National Prevailing Wage Center (NPWC) applies its four wage-level system to generate prevailing wage determinations when Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) data is used as the wage data source. The result of the proposed changes would be significantly higher NPWC prevailing wage determinations impacting both the temporary (e.g., H-1B) and permanent (PERM) programs.