On any construction contract that is either performed for or funded by the Federal Government, the Davis-Bacon Act sets the minimum wages that must be paid to all laborers and mechanics performing work on the project site. This minimum wage is referred to as the “prevailing wage.” The prevailing wages for the project are published in a wage determination issued by the Department of Labor. Most wage determinations are general, not project specific, and are based on data compiled on a county by county basis.

For years, wage determinations have been publicly available on the Department of Labor’s Wage Determinations OnLine website (www.wdol.gov). However, in an attempt to streamline the federal government contracting process, ten federal government websites are being combined into a single new site, https://beta.sam.gov. Although the new website is still in beta form, www.WDOL.gov has been officially retired and beta.sam.gov is now the official source for wage determinations. Currently, if you navigate to WDOL.gov you will be unable to access any information and will receive a landing page redirecting you to beta.SAM.gov.

Eventually, beta.SAM.gov will replace all of the following websites as a single database: CFDA.gov (Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance); SAM.gov (System for Award Management); FBO.gov (Federal Business Opportunities); FPDS-NG.gov (Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation); WDOL.gov (Wage Determinations Online); eSRS.gov (Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System); FAPIIS.gov (Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System); FSRS.gov (Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System); CPARS.gov (Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System); and PPIRS.gov (Past Performance Information Retrieval System).

The new beta.SAM.gov contains tools for users, including adding a search-based structure; adding the ability to search data by number, keyword, or location; providing search filters; adding the ability to search archived data simultaneously with active data; providing you with a history of changes made to the wage determinations; and adding the capability for the you to save searches and manage the wage determinations you follow.

To retrieve Davis-Bacon Act wage determinations, navigate to beta.SAM.gov and select “Wage Determinations” from the drop-down list next to the search bar. Then, if you know the ID number or any keyword associated with the wage determination you can enter that into the search bar. If you don’t know either, simply leave the search field blank and then click search. This will take you to the wage determination section of beta.SAM.gov. From there, you can narrow your search using keywords, dates, wage determination types, locations, and construction types.

An instructional video regarding using the wage determination section of beta.SAM.gov can be found at the following link: https://beta.sam.gov/cm/videos/detail?id=142.