Conformance is the step every federal-aid contractor hits when a crew classification doesn’t map to the published wage determination, and the clock on it can hold up certified payroll. The Labor Department has now put a number on how often that happens: 8,858 times a year.
The Wage and Hour Division has sent the collection to the Office of Management and Budget for re-approval, published 10 September as Federal Register document 2026-18506 at 91 FR 57657. Comments close 13 October.
The burden numbers
DOL estimates 8,858 respondents and 8,858 responses annually, a total annual time burden of 2,305 hours, and $75 in other annual costs. Affected public is listed as private sector businesses and other for-profits. It’s a revision request, and the department is seeking three years of authorization under OMB Control Number 1235-0023.
Two things sit inside the collection. Reports of conformed classifications and wage rates, which is the classification piece. And requests for approval of unfunded fringe benefit plans, which is the piece that catches contractors offering a benefit that isn’t held in a funded trust.
Statutory authority runs from the Davis-Bacon Act at 40 U.S.C. 3141 and following, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act at 40 U.S.C. 3701, and the labor standards at 29 CFR part 5. The predecessor 60-day notice ran at 91 FR 36012 on 15 June 2026.
What this is not
It’s a Paperwork Reduction Act notice, not a rule change. Nothing about prevailing wage rates themselves is moving here, and reading it as a Davis-Bacon amendment would be wrong. The 8,858 and 2,305 figures are also DOL’s own burden estimates, not measured filing counts.
Why bother commenting
Because one of the five questions DOL specifically invites comment on is whether the information is “processed and used in a timely manner,” and conformance turnaround is a live cost for contractors and their subs. If a classification request sits, payroll sits. This is the narrow, unglamorous window where a trade association can put an actual number on that delay in front of OMB.
The exposure is broadest on publicly funded building work with deep subcontractor tiers, the kind of stack running on a job like Willets Point Commons in Queens, where 1,100 units were financed through a mix of city subsidy and tax credit equity. Nora Hernandez at 202-693-8633 is the listed contact.
Source: Federal Register.