On July 9, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) published the list of randomized H-2B applications that were submitted between the filing window of July 3-5, 2024. The 2,158 applications submitted in this filing window requested a start date of Oct. 1, 2024, and are colloquially referred to as “winter” applications.
This name can be a misnomer, however, because many of the applications are actually requesting dates of need that end prior to when the major winter months occur. For instance, in 2023, 624 petitions were submitted within the filing window that requested start dates of October 1, but had end dates that were prior to January 1. Of those, 568 applications were certified, including 9,517 workers.
While an application with a start date in October and an end date occurring before January may appear to be an unusually short seasonal need on the surface, the period often is the end of an existing spring-summer-fall need. As it turns out, the old adage “something is better than nothing” applies to H-2B filings as well. For instance, if an H-2B application has a full date of need from April 1 through November 1, and the application receives an unfavorable randomization group in spring, that application will likely miss the initial H-2B visa cap. In total, the H-2B program allows by statute 66,000 visas per fiscal year, with 33,000 for start dates in October through March and the other 33,000 for start dates from April through September.
Although Congress has been providing additional supplemental visas to the H-2B community for the past few years, not every employer in every situation chooses to utilize those visas. Whether due to the timing of the application process or the requirements associated with the extra visas (returning workers, country limitations, etc.), if an employer decides not to utilize the additional visas, there is still one final bite at the apple -- the end-of-the-season request.
After returning the labor certification for the spring request back to the DOL, the employer then has to begin the process from the very beginning in order to request the October start date. However, for certain employers, namely those with very high workload demands before the winter months arrive, this type of filing may be important. Not to mention, it comes with the added benefit of counting the workers towards the next fiscal year cap, which begins in October. Those workers are therefore already counted once the spring applications begin to roll in, and therefore exempt from the uncertainty of the April H-2B cap. This is a critical benefit to processing workers under the October 1 cap. An employer has more certainty that these same workers can return under the April 1 cap allotment.
This year, of the 2,158 applications submitted for October 1, there were 1,728 applications that received a Group A assignment from the DOL randomization process. This is almost identical to the randomization report for 2023. In that report, there were 2,142 peak-filed H-2B cases, and of those applications, 1,884 were assigned to Group A. This means that it could be a very similar timing process to last year, and the date when the cap is met for the first half could well be close to the date it was met last year (October 11, 2023). One thing is for certain, time will tell. Happy FY 2025 H-2B Season!
