Where to Find Your Wage Determination Number

A wage determination is the Department of Labor's published schedule of minimum wage rates and fringe benefit rates for each labour classification, for a particular type of construction, in a particular geographic area. It is the document that answers "what does an electrician have to be paid on this job". The WH-347's own statement of compliance refers to it directly: the certification on page 2 covers whether wage and fringe rates paid "are not less than the applicable wage and fringe benefits rates for the classification(s) of work actually performed, as specified in the wage determination(s) incorporated into the contract."

"Incorporated into the contract" is the operative wording. Your wage determination is not whichever version happens to be current when you sit down to do payroll — it is the one attached to or referenced by your contract. The contracting agency selected it, and it is normally included in the solicitation and carried into the award documents. So the first place to look is not a search engine but the contract itself: the wage determination is usually an attachment or exhibit, often several pages of classifications and rates.

A general wage determination number typically reads something like CA20260012, followed by a modification number — for example "CA20260012, Mod 4". Broken down, that is a state code, a year, and a sequence number identifying the determination, with a modification number showing which revision of it applies. Put both on the form. The modification matters: determinations are revised, and a reviewer checking your rates needs to know which revision you were working from.

Start with your contract documents and the solicitation. If the determination is not obviously attached, the contract will normally reference it by number in the labour standards clauses. Failing that, ask the contracting officer or the project's compliance administrator — they selected it and they can tell you which one and which modification applies. General wage determinations are also published on SAM.gov, which is useful for reading the classifications and rates, but treat it as a reference rather than as the source of truth for your particular contract.

Determinations get modified. If you look one up today you will see the current modification, which may not be the one incorporated into a contract awarded some months ago. Working from the wrong modification produces rates that look defensible and are wrong for your job, in either direction. When a determination has been modified since award, whether that modification applies to your contract is a question for the contracting agency — it depends on the timing and on the terms of the contract, and it is not something to decide by assumption.

Note the plural in the form's own wording: "the wage determination(s) incorporated into the contract". A project can carry more than one — a building determination and a highway determination on a site that involves both, for example. If your job has multiple, the classification of work actually performed determines which applies to a given worker, and the form's field should reflect what governs the work on that payroll.

Nothing in the regulations that we could locate says a payroll is invalid without the number, and we are not going to assert one. What is true in practice is that the field exists on the form, agencies use it to check your rates against the schedule they selected, and a payroll that does not identify its determination is harder for a reviewer to accept. It is also a signal about the rest of the submission: if the person preparing payroll does not know which determination governs, the rates underneath are worth a second look.

Practical advice that costs nothing. Keep a copy of the determination as incorporated — the actual PDF, at the modification that applies — filed with the project. If a question arises two years later about why an electrician was paid a particular rate, the answer is that document, and "we looked it up at the time" is a much weaker answer than being able to produce it. This is the same instinct behind the regulation's recordkeeping requirements: the contemporaneous record is what defends the decision.