I-765 Total Wait Hits 189 Days, Nearly Triple the Year-Ago Reading
The median filing-to-approval wait for employment authorization documents rose to 189 days the week of Oct 19, up from 65 days the same week last year, as the pending backlog reached 1.23 million cases.
The median total wait for an I-765 Employment Authorization Document reached 189 days the week of Oct 19, measured from the date USCIS received the application to its approval. A year ago the same metric was 65 days; the week before it was 147 days. Both comparisons point in the same direction: the queue is longer and the recent uptick is real. As of Oct 26, 1,232,891 cases remain pending, up from 1,191,219 four weeks earlier. Every wait figure in this issue is measured on cases that were approved, so none of them describes how long those pending cases have waited.
- The median total wait (filing to approval) reached 189 days the week of Oct 19, up from 65 days the same week last year, a year-over-year increase of +190.8%.
- The pending backlog stood at 1,232,891 cases as of Oct 26, up 41,672 (+3.5%) from 1,191,219 four weeks earlier.
- IOE, which handled 9,527 of the 12,000 cases approved this week, posted a final-stage median of 108 days, while SRC posted 212 days on a slope of +12.7 days per week (R² = 0.58).
- Cases that received and responded to an RFE (Request for Evidence) cleared in a median of 63 days this week, faster than the 131-day median for cases with no RFE, triggering the rfe_fast anomaly flag.
- Filing-month cohorts from May through July 2026 show approval rates of 25% to 29%, meaning more than 70% of cases in each of those groups remain active or exited as of this snapshot.
189 days: a wait that has nearly tripled in a year
The median total wait for an I-765 application reached 189 days the week of Oct 19, measured from the date USCIS received the case to its first approval. One year ago the same metric sat at 65 days, a difference of 124 days. The prior week's reading was 147 days, so the single-week jump of 42 days compounds an already elevated trend. As of Oct 26, 1,232,891 cases remain pending across all filing months, up from 1,191,219 four weeks earlier. None of the wait figures in this issue describe those pending cases: they reflect only the roughly 12,000 cases that were approved during the week of Oct 19, for which USCIS had a known filing date.
A brief September dip, then the rebound
Walking through the 12-week total wait table: medians ran between 193 and 220 days through August, then fell to 118 days the week of Sep 21 and held in the 144-to-152 range through early October. This week's 189-day reading reverses that improvement. The interquartile range (IQR) this week is wide: the 25th percentile (p25) sits at 38 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 351 days. Roughly a quarter of cases this week were approved within 38 days of filing, while another quarter waited longer than 351 days. That spread suggests case composition, not a uniform queue, is driving the median. Readers should not assume their own wait will match the midpoint.
IOE holds the line; SRC and EAC keep climbing
The figures below describe the time from the last status update to approval (the final-stage wait), not the total filing-to-approval wait. IOE, which accounted for 9,527 of the 12,000 cases approved this week, posted a median of 108 days. Its 8-week slope is -4.7 days per week, though an R² of 0.14 means that direction is tentative. SRC posted 212 days on a slope of +12.7 days per week with R² of 0.58, a comparatively confident upward trend. EAC posted 397 days on a slope of +13.1 days per week with R² of 0.27. LIN (Nebraska Service Center) sat at 424 days. Among SRC's 1,711 approvals this week, 31% were transfer-touched; among EAC's 172, 12% were; at IOE, 0% were. That mix difference means these centers' medians may not reflect the same underlying case population, and the gap between them is not a verdict on any center's performance. The data does not tell us why the gaps exist.
EAC and LIN both show medians above 397 days. Their case volumes are small, 172 and 169 cases respectively this week, so those readings carry more variance than the IOE figure. SRC's trend is the more statistically grounded of the two climbing centers, given its R² of 0.58 against EAC's 0.27.
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