{"main_topic":"immigration","sub_topic":"dol_oflc","topic":"h2b_certifications","key":"immigration/dol_oflc/h2b_certifications","version":"1.0.0","year_min":2020,"year_max":2026,"year_gaps":[],"update_frequency":"quarterly","detail_levels":["counties","states"],"default_detail":"states","path_template":"immigration/h2b_certifications/year={year}/{detail}.parquet","grain":["year","county_fips","case_status","soc_occupation","cap_status"],"title":"H-2B Non-Agricultural Labor Certifications","summary":"H-2B temporary non-farm worker positions the Labor Department certified for Georgia worksites each fiscal year, by county, occupation, cap status and outcome.","description":"Positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor for H-2B temporary non-agricultural workers at Georgia worksites, by federal fiscal year: the job slots DOL's Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) approved on each employer's H-2B application, with the positions requested and the number of applications decided. Statewide by case outcome, occupation (SOC) and whether the workers are subject to the H-2B visa cap, and by the county of the application's first worksite. From OFLC's H-2B program disclosure data, FY2020 through the third quarter of FY2026.","source":"U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Foreign Labor Certification: H-2B program disclosure data (Performance Data), FY2020-FY2026 Q3","source_url":"https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/performance","endpoint":"/api/v1/immigration/h2b_certifications","columns":[{"name":"year","type":"integer","role":"year","nullable":false,"label":"Year","short_description":"","description":"Federal fiscal year (October 1 - September 30; FY2025 = October 1, 2024 - September 30, 2025) of DOL's final determination on the application (its decision date), NOT the calendar year. FY2020-FY2026. FY2026 is partial: decisions through June 30, 2026 only, with no Georgia decision before November 4, 2025 (the October 1 - November 12, 2025 federal shutdown); it will be replaced by the full-year file.","valid_values":null,"example":2025,"unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"county_fips","type":"string","role":"fk_county","nullable":true,"label":"County FIPS","short_description":"","description":"5-digit FIPS of the county of the application's first worksite. NULL on statewide rows. Where the worksite street address geocodes with certainty to another county and a second sign agrees (DOL's county holds under 5% of the worksite ZIP's residents, or the address lies at least 500 m from DOL's county), the address's county replaces DOL's (88 applications); it also fills 4 counties DOL left blank. Where DOL's stated county is impossible for the worksite ZIP code (none of the ZIP's 2020 population lives there), it is replaced by the ZIP's county only when certain - at least 99% of the ZIP in that county and the city confirming the ZIP (1 application); 8 applications that fail the test keep DOL's county (see limitations). Where DOL left the worksite county blank the county comes from the street address or, failing that, the worksite ZIP code; applications with no placeable county count in statewide rows only.","valid_values":null,"example":"13121","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"case_status","type":"string","role":"categorical","nullable":false,"label":"Case Status","short_description":"DOL's decision: certified, partially certified, withdrawn, denied, rejected, or all.","description":"OFLC's final determination on the application: 'certified' (certified in full), 'partially_certified' (certified only in part: almost always fewer positions than requested; on a few applications every requested position is certified for the same period, and the disclosure data do not say what part was not certified), 'withdrawn' (by the employer), 'denied', 'rejected' (an incomplete filing returned without a decision on the merits); 'all' = every application. Certifications DOL marks '(Returned)' are folded into their base status. Statewide rows only; county rows are 'all'.","valid_values":["all","certified","partially_certified","withdrawn","denied","rejected"],"example":"all","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":true,"metric_component":null},{"name":"soc_occupation","type":"string","role":"categorical","nullable":false,"label":"Occupation","short_description":"Occupation (SOC) of the job: top five, other, all.","description":"Occupation of the job (Standard Occupational Classification; O*NET detail codes folded to the SOC): 'landscaping_groundskeeping_workers' = SOC 37-3011 Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers; 'forest_conservation_workers' = SOC 45-4011 Forest and Conservation Workers; 'meat_poultry_fish_cutters_trimmers' = SOC 51-3022 Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers; 'maids_housekeeping_cleaners' = SOC 37-2012 Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners; 'hand_packers_packagers' = SOC 53-7064 Packers and Packagers, Hand; 'other' = every other occupation (highway maintenance workers, construction laborers, dishwashers, amusement attendants, cooks, ...); 'all' = every occupation. The five named codes hold the most Georgia positions certified over FY2020-FY2026. Statewide rows only; county rows are 'all'.","valid_values":["all","landscaping_groundskeeping_workers","forest_conservation_workers","meat_poultry_fish_cutters_trimmers","maids_housekeeping_cleaners","hand_packers_packagers","other"],"example":"all","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":true,"metric_component":null},{"name":"cap_status","type":"string","role":"categorical","nullable":false,"label":"H-2B Cap Status","short_description":"Whether the application's workers count against the H-2B visa cap: subject, exempt, mixed, unknown, or all.","description":"Whether the application's H-2B workers are subject to the statutory annual H-2B visa cap - an application-level label: 'cap_subject' (all subject), 'cap_exempt' (all exempt), 'mixed' (some of each), 'unknown' (neither reported: 1 FY2026 application); 'all' = every application. The source changes in FY2024: through FY2023 the application's yes/no CAP_EXEMPT flag (so 'mixed' cannot occur); from FY2024 the requested-worker counts CAP_SUBJECT_WORKERS / CAP_EXEMPT_WORKERS (24 FY2024 applications on the older form use the flag). A mixed application's positions are not split. Statewide rows only; county rows are 'all'.","valid_values":["all","cap_subject","cap_exempt","mixed","unknown"],"example":"all","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":true,"metric_component":null},{"name":"num_positions_certified","type":"integer","role":"metric","nullable":true,"label":"H-2B Positions Certified","short_description":"H-2B non-farm worker positions DOL certified in the fiscal year.","description":"Number of H-2B worker positions OFLC certified on the applications decided in the fiscal year (sum of TOTAL_WORKERS_CERTIFIED; blank on withdrawn, denied and rejected applications, counted 0). Job slots approved, not workers admitted or visas issued. DOL publishes no Georgia H-2B total; the national sum of the same field equals DOL's published positions certified exactly.","valid_values":null,"example":6289,"unit":"count","value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"num_positions_requested","type":"integer","role":"metric","nullable":true,"label":"H-2B Positions Requested","short_description":"H-2B positions the employers requested.","description":"Number of H-2B workers the same applications requested (sum of TOTAL_WORKERS_REQUESTED, every status; blank on five FY2023 rejected filings, counted 0). Positions certified divided by positions requested is the share certified.","valid_values":null,"example":8484,"unit":"count","value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"num_applications","type":"integer","role":"metric","nullable":true,"label":"Applications","short_description":"H-2B applications DOL decided in the fiscal year.","description":"Number of H-2B applications (Form ETA-9142B) on which OFLC issued a final determination (or which were withdrawn or rejected) in the fiscal year.","valid_values":null,"example":330,"unit":"count","value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null}],"key_metric":"num_positions_certified","usage":"Star-schema fact table. State rows (county_fips NULL) carry the full case_status x soc_occupation x cap_status cross product with 'all' totals - filter all three to 'all' for Georgia's total, and sum a breakdown's non-'all' values only with the other two fixed. County rows are totals (every categorical 'all') on a complete 159-county grid with real zeros. `year` is the federal fiscal year; the last year is partial; cap_status changes source in FY2024. Read directly with DuckDB over Parquet.","limitations":"Federal fiscal years (October 1 - September 30), not calendar years: `year` is the fiscal year in which DOL's Office of Foreign Labor Certification issued its final determination on the application (the decision date), the basis DOL itself reports on. DOL publishes no Georgia H-2B total: its selected statistics list only the top 10 states, and Georgia (2.1%-2.9% of national positions certified) is never among them. The national totals of the same disclosure files - positions requested, positions certified, and applications by outcome - match DOL's published H-2B Selected Statistics exactly in every year, FY2020-FY2026 (DOL's FY2023 PDF prints 15,502 applications processed, one more than its own outcome rows and the file hold, 15,501). FY2026 is PARTIAL: it holds decisions through June 30, 2026 only (DOL's cumulative Q3 file) and will be replaced when DOL posts the full year; do not compare it with complete years. No decision is dated before November 3, 2025 nationally or November 4, 2025 in Georgia, so October 2025 is empty - a gap that falls within the October 1 - November 12, 2025 federal government shutdown. Positions certified are job slots DOL approved for temporary foreign non-agricultural workers, not workers admitted or visas issued: the employer must still petition USCIS - where cap-subject workers count against the annual H-2B visa cap - and each worker must obtain a visa, so fewer may arrive. Each fiscal year counts the determinations issued in it, as in DOL's own figures. Withdrawn, denied and rejected applications certify no positions (DOL leaves the count blank, counted 0 here); rejected applications are incomplete filings returned without a decision on the merits, and 5 FY2023 rejected applications left the requested count blank, counted 0. Geography is the application's FIRST worksite (its worksite state, county and ZIP). 67% of the FY2020-FY2026 Georgia applications report work at additional worksites (DOL's Appendix A), which may lie in other counties or states; those sites are not used, so each application is counted once, where its first worksite is, and an application whose first worksite is outside Georgia is not counted even if it also lists Georgia sites. Employer, agent and attorney addresses are never used. Worksite counties are checked against the worksite street address. The Census Bureau's geocoder located the Georgia worksite addresses in 2020 Census geography and matched 1,447 applications (75%) to the same street address (house number and street, or intersection) in the same ZIP code. For 1,348 of them the address lies in DOL's county. For 88 applications (2,470 positions certified; FY2020 7, FY2021 11, FY2022 10, FY2023 10, FY2024 12, FY2025 22, FY2026 16) it lies in another county and a second sign agrees DOL's county is wrong - DOL's county holds under 5% of the worksite ZIP's residents, or the address lies at least 500 m from DOL's county, too far for a small placement error to explain - so the address's county is used. It also gives a county to 4 applications DOL left blank (0 positions certified). For 7 applications (59 positions certified) the address points to another county but lies within 500 m of DOL's county, where a geocoder can err, and DOL's county holds at least 5% of the ZIP's residents, so DOL's county is kept; some are DOL errors and some geocoder errors, and the geocoder alone cannot tell which. Where the address could not settle it, DOL's own worksite county is sometimes impossible for the worksite ZIP code - none of the ZIP's 2020 population lives in it. Such a county is replaced only when the right one is certain: at least 99% of the ZIP's population lives in one other county, and the worksite city is the ZIP's postal name or a Census place in that county, and not also a place or postal name in the stated county. 1 Georgia application (0 positions certified) was moved to the ZIP's county this way (FY2025 1); it sits in 1 ZIP code, 0 wholly inside the new county and 1 at least 99% inside it. Another 8 applications (216 positions certified) keep a stated county that is impossible for their ZIP, because the evidence falls short of certain: in 2 the ZIP straddles a county line and in 6 the city does not match the ZIP (the ZIP itself may be mistyped). Their county may be wrong. DOL left the worksite county blank on 17 Georgia applications (FY2022 2, FY2023 7, FY2025 7, FY2026 1). 4 of them are placed by their street address (above); 11 (48 positions certified) are placed in the county holding most of the population of their worksite ZIP code (2020 Census); 1 of them sits in a ZIP code that straddles a county line. Where DOL does name the county (as corrected above), the ZIP's dominant county disagrees with it on 127 of the 1,895 Georgia applications whose ZIP is in the crosswalk (6.7%), so a recovered county may be the neighboring one. 2 FY2022 denied applications could not be placed (worksite ZIP 30026, 3026, not a Georgia ZIP in the crosswalk) and count in the state row only, so that year's county rows sum to 2 applications, 6 positions requested and 0 positions certified fewer than the state row. In every other year county rows sum exactly to the state row. `cap_status` says whether an application's workers count against the statutory H-2B cap, and its source changes with DOL's form, so the series breaks in FY2024: through FY2023 it is the application's single yes/no cap-exempt flag, so every application is wholly 'cap_subject' or 'cap_exempt' and none can be 'mixed'; from FY2024 the form reports how many of the requested workers are subject to the cap and how many are exempt, and an application with some of each is 'mixed' (FY2024 also includes 24 Georgia applications filed on the older form, classified by their flag); 'unknown' is a FY2026 rejected application that reports neither. It is an application-level label: the positions of a 'mixed' application are not split, because DOL reports the subject/exempt split for requested workers only, not for certified ones. `case_status` is the final determination; certifications marked '(Returned)' - the certified application returned to the employer for filing with USCIS - count as certified or partially certified. `soc_occupation` names the five occupations (SOC codes) with the most Georgia positions certified over FY2020-FY2026 and groups every other occupation as 'other'. County rows are totals only (every categorical 'all'); the breakdowns are statewide. No suppression: rows are applications (job orders), not people, so the domain's county small-cell rule does not apply, small county counts are published, and every zero is a real zero. Wages, the nature of the temporary need (seasonal, peakload, one-time, intermittent) and employer identity are not published here.","null_semantics":{"suppressed_to_null":false,"zero_is_real":true},"available_years":[2020,2021,2022,2023,2024,2025,2026],"schema_hash":"fcb4caec508b28ec3f8a9cc682d1bd8bf69c900a8dc44e6ffc3a62e3e3f19930","tags":["immigration","u.s. department of labor, employment and training administration, office of foreign labor certification: h-2b program disclosure data","h2b_certifications"],"granularity_description":"One row per year, county_fips, case_status, soc_occupation, cap_status (geography columns are NULL at higher aggregation levels).","example_queries":[{"description":"Latest year (2026), states detail","query":"SELECT * FROM h2b_certifications WHERE year = 2026 LIMIT 100"},{"description":"Filter by case_status = all","query":"SELECT * FROM h2b_certifications WHERE case_status = 'all' AND year = 2026 LIMIT 100"}],"foreign_keys":[{"column":"county_fips","target_object":"counties","target_columns":["county_fips"],"attribute_columns_added":["county_name"],"scope":"global"}],"filters":[{"param":"year","kind":"year_exact","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"year_min","kind":"year_range","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"year_max","kind":"year_range","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"detail","kind":"detail","type":"string","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["counties","states"],"default":"states"},{"param":"county_fips","kind":"foreign_key","column":"county_fips","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"case_status","kind":"categorical","column":"case_status","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["all","certified","partially_certified","withdrawn","denied","rejected"],"has_total":true,"total_value":"all","requires_single_value":false,"nullable":false,"null_filter_token":null},{"param":"soc_occupation","kind":"categorical","column":"soc_occupation","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["all","landscaping_groundskeeping_workers","forest_conservation_workers","meat_poultry_fish_cutters_trimmers","maids_housekeeping_cleaners","hand_packers_packagers","other"],"has_total":true,"total_value":"all","requires_single_value":false,"nullable":false,"null_filter_token":null},{"param":"cap_status","kind":"categorical","column":"cap_status","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["all","cap_subject","cap_exempt","mixed","unknown"],"has_total":true,"total_value":"all","requires_single_value":false,"nullable":false,"null_filter_token":null}],"filter_hints":[],"values_endpoint":"/api/v1/immigration/h2b_certifications/values"}