H-1B LCA Filings in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN
LCA filing records in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metro. U.S. Department of Labor disclosure data lists 70,325 Labor Condition Application filings from 9,262 distinct employer filers across the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metropolitan area. DOL certified 97.8% of those filings, a DOL record status for the prevailing-wage and working-condition attestations. This filing record does not establish a USCIS petition, an approval, a hire, confirmed sponsorship, or a visa outcome.
Where this metro sits in the corpus. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ranks #7 of 113 published metro profiles by disclosed LCA filing volume, putting it in the top 6% of the current dataset. The comparison is only about recorded filing volume in this DOL snapshot; it does not estimate local job availability, confirmed sponsorship, visa approvals, or the size of the area’s overall workforce.
Two consecutive completed-year declines
Recorded LCA volume moved from 23,770 in FY2023 to 20,374 in FY2024 (-14%), then to 20,078 in FY2025 (-1%). The table below preserves the annual record; it does not identify the reason for the change or predict a future outcome.
Filing volume vs. employer-filer breadth. By LCA filing volume, Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ranks #7 of 113 metros. By count of distinct employer filers, it ranks #5 of 113. The two ranks sit close together, so LCA filing totals and employer-filer breadth move in step here more than in most metros. These are descriptive DOL filing counts only.
Offered wage. Across disclosed LCAs assigned to Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN, the average annualized offered wage is $116,210. That uses the same 15k–1M annualization guard as employer, occupation, and state pages, so a handful of unit-confused rows cannot drag the metro average into the millions.
National-scale filing hub
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ranks #7 of 113 published metros with 70,325 disclosed LCAs across 9,262 employers (97.8% DOL-certified). That puts it in the top cohort by raw filing volume, a national hub, not a mid-market satellite.
| Peer hub | LCA filings | Employers |
|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 226,133 | 25,755 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 166,609 | 14,256 |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 160,647 | 7,776 |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 120,200 | 6,263 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 111,539 | 11,831 |
LCA Filing Volume by Year
H-1B LCA filings in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN from FY2023 to FY2025
FY2026 is partial data (through Q1). Chart shows completed fiscal years only.
Annual Breakdown
| Year | LCA filings | Certified | Cert Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | 23,770 | 23,271 | 97.9% |
| FY2024 | 20,374 | 19,906 | 97.7% |
| FY2025 | 20,078 | 19,637 | 97.8% |
| FY2026(partial) | 6,103 | 5,984 | 98.1% |
About This Data
H-1B Labor Condition Application (LCA) filing data is sourced from U.S. Department of Labor disclosure files. Data covers fiscal years 2023 through 2026. Metro assignment uses the Census Bureau's July 2023 CBSA county delineation plus principal-city crosswalk; average offered wages use the same 15k–1M annualization sanity band as employer, occupation, and state pages. These records do not establish USCIS petition outcomes, hiring, or actual compensation.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
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