On June 27, 2023, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) released this year’s Appendix A, which implements the new list of professional occupations for the July 2023 through June 2024 wage year and will be effective starting July 1, 2023.

By way of background, on Nov. 15, 2021, the Employment and Training Administration issued a Federal Register Notice (FRN) informing the public that the OFLC was updating Appendix A to the Preamble–Education and Training Categories by Occupational Information Network (O*NET)–Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Occupations. Appendix A is a list of professional occupations that serves as a guide for employers to distinguish between professional and non-professional occupations in order to comply with the professional recruitment requirements of the PERM program. The FRN stated that OFLC intends to review the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) occupational and education data each year to publish a new list of occupations on its website, even when BLS data remain the same from the previous year.