H-1B LCA Employer New-Filing Watchlist (honest quarterly lag)

Watch a list of employers (legal names and/or FEINs) and receive typed LCA_NEW_FILING events when new Labor Condition Applications appear in official DOL OFLC public disclosure Excel / open data for those employers — role, wage, worksite, visa class, case status. Not another full-year H-1B salary dump. Not myvisajobs HTML.

Honest title: OFLC disclosure cadence is quarterly (sometimes an intra-quarter refresh). Detection latency ≈ your schedule + official publish lag. This is not a daily filing alert feed.

Value proposition

• Employer watchlist × OFLC snapshot diff → LCA_NEW_FILING only for new case numbers on your book.
• Official / public DOL data only (Performance Data). No paid immigration APIs.
• Pay only for unique delivered new-filing events. First observation of each case stores a baseline (no charge). Quiet quarters ≈ $0.
• Durable KVS checkpoint + event_uid dedupe. Events carry as_of / disclosure_quarter for honest dating.
• Optional filters: visa class, SOC prefix, worksite state, min wage.

PRODUCTION USE (required for real monitoring)

Store default ≠ product. Schema defaults use sourceMode=fixture so Apify Store daily auto-tests leave a non-empty health dataset without downloading OFLC Excel. That fixture path only writes a non-billable RUN_STATUS / FIXTURE_HEALTH row. It is not LCA monitoring.

For production monitoring you must:

1. Set sourceMode = live
2. Provide employerNames and/or employerFeins
3. Set disclosureQuarter (e.g. FY2026_Q3) or disclosureFileUrl to the official DOL Excel/CSV link
4. Schedule runs after each OFLC disclosure publish (quarterly)
5. Prefer maxDisclosureRows only for smoke tests — full files are large (often 80–250+ MB)

Official reference: DOL OFLC Performance Data

Data limitations (read before buying)

• Quarterly lag (honest). OFLC public disclosure is published on a quarterly schedule (cumulative FY files). This Actor does not claim same-day or daily LCA alerts.
• Live mode downloads the official disclosure Excel/CSV. Files are large; budget compute and time accordingly. Use disclosureFileUrl when you already have the exact DOL link.
• First run stores baselines for matching cases already in the file — you are not charged for “current book” snapshots.
• Name matching is normalized string containment / equality (not fuzzy entity resolution). Prefer FEINs when you have them.
• Unrelated employers in the national file are ignored (watchlist filter — not a dump).
• We cite the U.S. Department of Labor / OFLC as the data origin. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by DOL.

Apify Store daily auto-test / default input

Field	Default
employerNames	["ACME CLOUD INC","CONTOSO LABS LLC"]
visaClasses	["H-1B"]
sourceMode	fixture
emitFixtureDemoEvents	false
maxRunSeconds	55
maxEvents	500

On that path the Actor SUCCEEDS quickly, pushes exactly one RUN_STATUS / FIXTURE_HEALTH row (billable: false), and does not charge lca-filing-event-delivered.

Input (summary)

Field	Notes
employerNames / employerFeins	Watchlist (at least one required at runtime)
visaClasses / socCodePrefixes / worksiteStates / minWageFrom	Optional filters
sourceMode	fixture (default) or live
emitFixtureDemoEvents	Default false
disclosureQuarter	e.g. FY2026_Q3 — as_of + URL resolve
disclosureFileUrl	Optional official DOL file URL override
maxDisclosureRows	CU guard for live smoke
maxRunSeconds / maxEvents	Budgets
resumeFromCheckpoint	Default true

Production example

{
  "employerNames": ["ACME CLOUD INC", "CONTOSO LABS LLC"],
  "employerFeins": ["12-3456789"],
  "visaClasses": ["H-1B"],
  "sourceMode": "live",
  "disclosureQuarter": "FY2026_Q3",
  "maxRunSeconds": 300,
  "resumeFromCheckpoint": true
}

Output

Filing events (billable under PPE)

Typed LCA_NEW_FILING rows include: employer, FEIN, case number/status, visa class, job title, SOC, wage, worksite, decision/received dates, as_of / disclosure_quarter, evidence, summary, source_url, event_uid, billable: true.

RUN_STATUS (never billed)

Every successful run pushes one health row (FIXTURE_HEALTH | MONITOR_IDLE | CATCHUP_COMPLETE | HEALTH_OK) including as_of / disclosure_quarter when known.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: lca-filing-event-delivered at $0.02 per delivered unique new-filing event ($20 / 1,000). Single tier (see docs/monetization.md and ADR 0010). Health / baseline / duplicate / filtered / fixture rows are never charged.

Local development

cd actors/h1b-lca-employer-filing-watchlist
npm install
npm test
npm run build
# Store-safe fixture health:
apify run -p
# Demo typed events locally:
# set input emitFixtureDemoEvents=true (still sourceMode=fixture)

Attribution

Data originates from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) public disclosure files. Not an official DOL product. Not myvisajobs or any paid immigration analytics vendor.