The Department of Labor (“DOL”) has announced the group assignments for H-2B visa petitions filed with an April 1, 2025, start date. Employers seeking H-2B workers for this period submitted 8,759 applications, representing requests for a total of 149,953 workers. On January 4, 2025, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification finalized the randomization process and assigned each application to a group. If your petition has received a group assignment, you may be asking: What’s the next step?

Here’s how the process works

The DOL allocates H-2B applications in groups based on the semiannual visa allotment of 33,000 H-2B visas. Applications that collectively total enough job opportunities to potentially satisfy this cap are placed in Group A. After Group A, the DOL assigns approximately 20,000 worker positions to subsequent groups in ascending sequential order, such as Group B, Group C, Group D, and so on.

The DOL issues an initial communication to all petitions in Group A first, issuing either a Notice of Acceptance or a Notice of Deficiency. Once the DOL has communicated with everyone in Group A, the DOL proceeds to Group B, then Group C, and so forth, following the same procedure.

What if you’re not in Group A?

The fact that the number of applications in Group A corresponds to the numerical cap does not guarantee which employers will ultimately secure H-2B visas, nor does it exclude employers in subsequent groups from eventually obtaining them. As always, the allocation of H-2B visa spots is determined by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) during the filing and adjudication of the H-2B petition, following the completion of DOL processing. However, the further a company’s application is placed in the group sequence, the lower the likelihood of receiving an H-2B visa under the semiannual cap. Instead, these employers may need to depend on the expansion cap.

Expansion Cap

When the initial allotment of 33,000 H-2B visas for the semiannual period is exhausted, companies that were not granted visas will need to explore options under the expansion cap. As discussed in our November newsflash, the following visa allocations were assigned for the expansion caps:

• 20,000 visas are immediately available for workers from the following countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Companies requesting an employment start date in the second half of FY 2025 (i.e., April 1, 2025) must file such petitions no earlier than 15 days after the second half statutory cap is reached.

A total of 44,716 H-2B visas have been allocated for returning workers—individuals who held H-2B visas or status during one of the past three fiscal years, regardless of their country of origin. These visas are distributed as follows:

• First Half of FY 2025 (October 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025):
  20,716 visas are available immediately for petitions with employment start dates on or before March 31, 2025.
• Early Second Half of FY 2025 (April 1, 2025 – May 14, 2025):
  19,000 visas are designated for the early half of FY 2025. These petitions must request employment start dates between April 1, 2025, and May 14, 2025, and can only be filed 15 days after the second half statutory cap is reached.
• Late Second Half of FY 2025 (May 15, 2025 – September 30, 2025):
  5,000 visas are set aside for petitions with employment start dates between May 15, 2025, and September 30, 2025. These petitions may be filed no earlier than 45 days after the second half statutory cap is reached.

Last year, the H-2B visa cap was hit on March 7, 2024. We will closely monitor the cap count this year and provide updates to ensure you know when it is time to file under the expansion cap.

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