CW-1 Prevailing Wage (Northern Marianas)

The CW-1 classification lets an employer in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) hire a nonimmigrant worker for a job that no qualified U.S. worker is available to fill. It exists only in the Commonwealth: the regulation calls it the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program and traces it to 48 U.S.C. 1806 (20 CFR 655.400). The Department of Labor issues a temporary labor certification for the program, and part of it is a prevailing wage determination. The rules are in 20 CFR part 655, subpart E; the wage rule is 655.410.

Three wage floors, highest wins

An employer must advertise, offer and pay at least the highest of three figures: the prevailing wage for the job obtained from the National Prevailing Wage Center (NPWC), the federal minimum wage, and the Commonwealth minimum wage. The same wage must be paid to the employer’s CW-1 workers and to its U.S. workers in corresponding employment. A determination from the NPWC never permits paying less than any other applicable federal or Commonwealth law requires (655.410(a)). The Commonwealth is one of the territories on the Department of Labor’s state minimum wage table, which this site shows alongside the federal minimum wage.

How the NPWC sets the prevailing wage

The order of sources in 655.410(b) is specific to the islands, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey does not publish estimates for the CNMI:

1. The Governor’s survey. If the Governor of the Commonwealth reports, annually, a mean hourly wage for the occupation from a survey that meets the standards in 655.410(e), that mean is the prevailing wage. The standards require a survey independently conducted by the Commonwealth or one of its agencies, colleges or universities; an arithmetic mean; a good-faith attempt to reach every employer in the occupation or a random sample of them; at least 30 workers and three employers; coverage across the industries that employ the occupation; all types of pay; wages paid within the 12 months before submission; and a methodology statement. The OFLC Administrator reviews the survey and, if a wage is not accepted, explains why in writing so the Governor may correct or redo it (655.410(f)).
2. Guam’s OEWS mean. If no approved survey covers the occupation, and the OEWS survey reports a mean wage for the occupation in Guam, that Guam mean is the prevailing wage.
3. The national OEWS mean, adjusted. If Guam has no published mean for the occupation either, the prevailing wage is the national OEWS mean for the occupation, multiplied by the ratio of Guam’s all-occupations mean to the national all-occupations mean.

Where the job’s duties fall in more than one occupation, the highest of the applicable prevailing wages applies.

The form and the validity period

The employer requests the determination electronically on Form ETA-9141C, the CW-1 version of the prevailing wage request, before filing the CW-1 Application for Temporary Employment Certification (Form ETA-9142C) with the National Processing Center. The NPWC returns the form endorsed with the wage and its source. The validity period is between 90 and 365 days from issuance, and the determination must be kept for three years. An employer may ask the NPWC director to review a determination within seven business days and may take the director’s decision to the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals within ten (655.411).

Why this site shows no CW-1 table

The roadmap for this section planned a CW-1 wage table. On the day this page was reviewed the Department of Labor’s CW-1 program page carried the forms, their instructions and user guides but no wage table or data file; the OFLC wage data download for the 2026 to 2027 wage year contained wage rows for Guam and for every state and nonmetropolitan area in the OEWS program, but none for the Commonwealth; and the Governor’s survey, where one has been accepted, is a Commonwealth publication rather than a federal one. With no federal file to ingest, nothing has been typed in. The sources list below links the regulation, the program page and the download page, and the data-sources document in this site’s repository records the attempt. A reader who needs the figure for a particular occupation obtains it from the NPWC through the form; the occupation pages here show Guam’s OEWS estimates where BLS publishes them, which under the second rule above can be the prevailing wage, but a survey table is not a determination.

Related

The same office issues determinations for PERM and H-2B cases on the mainland version of the form, and the H-1B levels page explains the wage library the NPWC reads for those programs.