Headlines:
Most FY 2025 Employment-Based Limits Could Be Reached in August or September, Visa Bulletin Says – The Department of State’s (DOS) Visa Bulletin for September notes a “steady increase” in both U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and DOS demand patterns for employment-based visas.
Economic Policy Institute Says Trump Deportation Agenda Will Lead to Millions of Lost Jobs for Both Immigrants and U.S. Citizens – Echoing news reports, the Economic Policy Institute says that the Trump administration’s emphasis on increasing deportations will result in lost jobs, especially in construction and child care, and will “curtail business operations and reduce employer demand for immigrant and U.S.-born labor.”
OFLC Releases Statistics on Prevailing Wage Determinations/Labor Certifications and an Updated H-2B Foreign Labor Recruiter List – The Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification released statistics on employer activities regarding prevailing wage determinations and labor certifications, and the H-2B foreign labor recruiter list.
DOS Releases Visa Office Report for 2024 – The Department of State noted that the Visa Office changed its methodology for calculating visa data beginning with the FY 2019 annual visa office report.
Details:
Most FY 2025 Employment-Based Limits Could Be Reached in August or September, Visa Bulletin Says
The Department of State’s (DOS) Visa Bulletin for September notes a “steady increase” in both U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and DOS demand patterns for employment-based green cards. As a result, the bulletin says that the Visa Office expects to reach fiscal year (FY) 2025 category limits in most employment-based preference categories during August and September. “If at any time an annual limit were reached, it would be necessary to immediately make the preference category ‘unavailable,’ and no further requests for numbers would be honored,” DOS warns.
The bulletin also notes that the worldwide employment-based preference numerical limit for FY 2025 is 150,037.
Economic Policy Institute Says Trump Deportation Agenda Will Lead to Millions of Lost Jobs for Both Immigrants and U.S. Citizens
Echoing news reports about developments in the U.S. economy related to job losses, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, Trump’s Deportation Agenda Will Destroy Millions of Jobs, says that the Trump administration’s emphasis on increasing deportations will result in lost jobs, especially in construction and child care, and will “curtail business operations and reduce employer demand for immigrant and U.S.-born labor.” California, Florida, New York, and Texas are expected to suffer the highest numbers of job losses.
The report states:
Immigrant workers make up a substantial part of the workforce in the United States: 1 in 5 workers is an immigrant, and about half of immigrants are noncitizens. Because of their sizable presence in the workforce, large-scale attempts to remove them will lead to extensive employment losses for foreign-born workers. What is less apparent, however, is the impact that arrests, detentions, and deportations of immigrants will have on millions of U.S.-born workers who will lose their jobs. The widespread job losses for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers will undercut the narrative that abruptly removing immigrants will somehow magically increase employment opportunities for U.S.-born workers.
OFLC Releases Statistics on Prevailing Wage Determinations/Labor Certifications and an Updated H-2B Foreign Labor Recruiter List
On August 15, 2025, the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) released statistics on employer activities regarding prevailing wage determinations and labor certifications, and the H-2B foreign labor recruiter list.
- The comprehensive set of public disclosure data (through the third quarter of FY 2025) was drawn from employer applications requesting prevailing wage determinations and labor certifications for the PERM, LCA (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3), H-2A, H-2B, CW-1, and Prevailing Wage programs. OFLC recently implemented the revised form ETA-9089. As a result, OFLC said, there will be “two distinct PERM disclosure data files. These files will each have their own record layout documents. The public disclosure files include all final determinations OFLC issued for these programs” in the October 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025, reporting period of FY 2025.
- OFLC has also released selected program statistics for the first half of FY 2025 for the PERM, LCA (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3), H-2A, H-2B, CW-1, and Prevailing Wage programs, and the H-2B foreign labor recruiter list for the third quarter of FY 2025, along with a related FAQ.
DOS Releases Visa Office Report for 2024
The Department of State (DOS) has released its Report of the Visa Office for 2024.
DOS noted that the Visa Office changed its methodology for calculating visa data beginning with the FY 2019 annual visa office report “to reflect the greater access to application-level data attained during FY 2019.”
Also, the report notes that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, posts were instructed to suspend routine visa services and provide only mission-critical and emergency services in late March 2020. “This had a significant impact on the provision of Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visa-related services. Posts were only able to resume limited services on a post-by-post basis beginning in July 2020, as local conditions allowed,” the report notes in Table I, Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visas Issued at Foreign Service Posts, Fiscal Years 2020-2024.