There are no recent statistics available for Employment based cases. I know that PD used to be there before 2000 but then Bill Clinton changed it before he left office with his AC-21 law. Earlier the numbers that were unused by other contries were not getting allocated to "congested" countries and strict adherence was done based on per country limit. But Clinton changed the law in employment and allowed numbers unused by other countries to be recaptured and used by "congested" countries. This is what the bulletin talks about when it says that it has recaptured 110K numbers from 1999 and 2000. I guess the numbers that are available are much more, but then in the last 4-5 years many more people have come into US on H1 (H1 cap was higher for 3 years) and on L1. All these people are now trying to immigrate (and are at various stages of immigration). Since this number happens to be pretty large (how large .. does anyone know .. I bet 100 bucks even USCIS does not know), they do not have an estimate as to what will actually happen. Based on the approval trends today they are stating that it may retrogress. But this approval trend will change with this date. Since most service centers were adjudicating EB3 cases (easier to adjudicate then EB2 / NIW cases as these take more time), the trend may change as a large amount of case load is removed from the queue of 485 and the officers that are freed either clear the backlog in 485 or in 140.GCJaisaKoiNahi said:
my guess is that they were adjudicating more EB3, so the trend for past 3 months will show that average usage is high in that category, so a date. Now if they shift their focus to EB2 / other cases, the trend will completely change for EB3. The end result will be that as more numbers for this year are available in EB3 next quarter, the dates may not go down. In fact that may move forward. I think the best it to wait and watch.