Wage Levels I–IV: What They Mean on a Filing
Every LCA filing that relies on the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme records a prevailing wage level from I to IV. The level is the Department's way of pricing experience within an occupation. Level I is the entry level, for workers who perform routine tasks under close supervision. Level II is qualified, for workers who perform moderately complex tasks with limited judgment. Level III is experienced, for workers who perform complex tasks requiring judgment and may coordinate others. Level IV is fully competent, for workers who plan and perform the most complex work, often supervising or managing others. The prevailing wage rises steeply from level to level within the same occupation and area.
This structure explains a large part of the spread readers see on this site's occupation pages. When the middle half of filings for an occupation spans a wide range, it is usually not that employers disagree wildly about one job; it is that filings mix Level I offers to new graduates with Level IV offers to senior specialists under the same SOC code. A reader comparing a personal offer to an occupation median should therefore ask which level the filing used. An offer near the 25th percentile may be a perfectly ordinary Level I or II offer, while the same number for a Level IV role would be unusually low.
Employers must offer at least the higher of the prevailing wage for the level and the actual wage paid to similarly employed workers with similar experience and qualifications. The actual-wage prong is internal to the employer and is not published in the disclosure data, which is one reason offered wages in the file cluster at or just above the prevailing wage for the stated level: the prevailing wage is the visible floor, and many offers are set with reference to it. Readers should treat a filing's offered wage as a floor-anchored figure, not as evidence of the employer's full pay band for the role.
The wage source also matters. Most filings use the government's OEWS survey, but the rules allow other legitimate sources, including published surveys and, in some cases, a prevailing wage determination issued by the Department. The disclosure file records the source and the OEWS year used. When two filings for the same occupation and city show different prevailing wages, the cause is often a different level, a different source, or a different survey year rather than an error — although errors do occur, which is why this site applies a published outlier rule before computing medians.
For practical research, the level system suggests a disciplined way to use this site. Start on the occupation page and note the median and the middle-half range. Then consider where a role's stated level would place it inside that range: entry-level roles belong in the lower part, senior roles in the upper part. Then check the city page for the local level of pay, and the employer page for the specific firm's pattern. That three-step reading respects how the wage was actually constructed on the form, instead of comparing a single offer to a single national number that blends all four levels together.
How These Figures Were Computed
Every figure on this page was computed by our script directly from the U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA disclosure files for FY2024 Q4 and FY2025 Q1–Q4, retrieved in October 2026. We kept only cases whose CASE_STATUS is exactly “Certified” — denied, withdrawn and certified-withdrawn cases are excluded. Headline medians use filings whose wage unit is a year, because annual salaries compare cleanly; hourly, weekly and monthly filings are counted in case totals but are not converted into the headline median, and our methodology page explains that choice in full. Wages below $15,080 a year (the annualized federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour) or above $1,000,000 a year are excluded from medians as likely data-entry placeholders, and the number excluded is reported in the manifest that accompanies this site. Medians are shown alongside means because a handful of very large offers can drag a mean far above what a typical filing actually offered.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the data behind this guide come from?
All figures referenced in this guide come from the U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA disclosure files for FY2024 Q4 and FY2025 Q1–Q4, retrieved in October 2026, filtered to 662,198 cases with a status of exactly Certified. The methodology page documents the full cleaning process.