H-2A Pre-Recruitment Checklist: Labor-Supply States and Circulation Timeline

Recruitment start is the deadline

The Notice of Acceptance is in the file, and the next H-2A deadline is the first recruitment act, not the filing date. That start fixes the labor-supply matrix and the recruitment plan the employer must follow.

The Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) labor supply state determination applies to employers who have not started recruitment after receiving a Notice of Acceptance. If recruitment has already begun, the employer is outside the class of cases the determination reaches. A job order, a posting, a referral request, or an outreach email can all be treated as the beginning of the recruitment record. The record should say which act happened first and when. That record is what makes the threshold rule testable.

The rule follows the Notice of Acceptance date

The OFLC labor supply state determinations shown in the FLAG chart are effective for Notices of Acceptance issued on or after August 27, 2025. The 2022 H-2A Final Rule, effective November 14, 2022, prompted OFLC to adopt a new process for identifying labor supply states. The OFLC Administrator opened a 60-day public comment period on May 22, 2026, to gather input on labor supply states and related recruitment methods. The Administrator retained all existing labor supply state requirements in full effect while making modifications.

A State Workforce Agency must circulate an approved H-2A job order to every additional state listed in the Labor Supply States column. The OFLC Certifying Officer identifies the specific additional positive recruitment requirements in the Notice of Acceptance Letter. The Notice of Acceptance, not the chart alone, controls the file because it carries the circulation states and the positive-recruitment steps.

The workaround is a pre-recruitment evidence file

Build the file before the first job order or outreach goes out. The file is the evidence that the employer applied the right labor-supply matrix before recruitment starts. Each item below is a gate: if one fails, the recruitment plan is not locked.

The file answers three questions in one minute: has recruitment started, which chart controls, and what does the Notice of Acceptance (NOA) require? The first two items protect the threshold rule; the middle items turn the chart and NOA into an executable plan; the last item keeps the plan from colliding with the calendar.

• Recruitment status: mark the case as not started after the Notice of Acceptance; if any job order, posting, or outreach has already gone out after the NOA, flag it for counsel.
• NOA date: record the issue date and compare it with the chart's effective date.
• Chart version: pull the labor-supply chart in force for the NOA date and note the Labor Supply States column.
• NOA instructions: read the Notice of Acceptance Letter for the positive-recruitment requirements.
• SWA circulation: list the additional states from the Labor Supply States column and confirm the State Workforce Agency will circulate the approved job order to each one.
• Positive recruitment: copy the Certifying Officer's requirements from the Notice of Acceptance Letter into the evidence file.
• Timeline buffer: set internal deadlines so circulation, referrals, and evidence collection finish before the recruitment window closes.

A reviewer should see the sequence without a second search: threshold rule, chart, NOA, circulation states, outreach, buffer. A missed threshold rule is hard to cure with a clean outreach file, and the file should show who made each decision.

The buffer is the part that keeps the file usable, and it should be visible in the file, not just in a calendar. It should cover SWA circulation, worker referrals, and the employer's own outreach, because the Notice of Acceptance sets the obligations and the chart sets the states. The file should show which chart version was used and why.