I-90 Final-Stage Median Falls 55 Days in One Week, Reaching 94 Days
The week of May 18 produced the steepest single-week drop in the 12-week tracking window, with the anomaly detector firing at -3.54σ against the prior 4-week trailing trend. The acceleration has been building for three months; this week is its sharpest expression yet.
The I-90 final-stage wait — the time from a case's last reported status to approval — fell to 94 days the week of May 18, down 55 days from the prior week's 149 and 116 days below the 12-week trailing average of 210 days. An outlier flag fired at -3.54σ against the prior 4-week trend, confirming this is not routine week-to-week noise. Every approved case this week routed through the IOE e-filing channel, and the 8-week regression slope of -19.4 days per week at R²=0.94 shows the improvement has been sustained and consistent. For applicants with cases nearing the top of the queue, this week's number is a meaningful data point — though a smaller-than-usual sample and a growing active backlog are the counterweights to read alongside it.
- The I-90 final-stage median fell 55 days in a single week, dropping from 149 to 94 days and triggering an outlier flag at -3.54σ against the prior 4-week trend.
- The 8-week regression slope of -19.4 days per week at R²=0.94 confirms a near-linear, 12-week acceleration from 262 days in early March.
- RFE (Request for Evidence) cases cleared in a median of 23 days this week, compared to 210 days for plain-processing cases — a ratio of roughly 9x — with the rfe_fast anomaly flag firing.
- Recent filing-month groups remain mostly pending: the January 2026 group is only 12.5% approved at 20 weeks, while February and March 2026 groups sit at 7–8% cleared.
- The total active backlog grew by 5,946 cases (+9.6%) over the 18 days from May 7 to May 25, with the April 2026 group driving the largest share of that growth.
A 55-day drop in one week
This week's final-stage median for I-90 approvals — the time from a case's last reported status to approval — fell to 94 days, down 55 days from last week's 149 and 116 days below the 12-week trailing average of 210 days. An outlier flag (outlier_week_low) fired at -3.54σ against the prior 4-week trailing trend, indicating this week's reading is well outside recent normal scatter. The 8-week regression slope of -19.4 days per week at R²=0.94 shows this acceleration has been building consistently, not erratically. All 3,504 approved cases this week processed through the IOE e-filing channel.
Twelve weeks of steady acceleration, now at pace
The I-90 final-stage median stood at 262 days in both W11 and W12 (the weeks of March 2 and March 9), then declined in each of the 10 subsequent weeks through W22. The cumulative improvement is 168 days over 12 weeks. At R²=0.94, the 8-week regression explains nearly all of the week-to-week movement — this has been a consistent, near-linear descent, not a sequence of unrelated fluctuations.
Because the entire approved caseload routes through the IOE e-filing channel, there is no center-to-center divergence to parse this week. The IOE slope of -19.4 days per week and R²=0.94 represent the full picture. That is an unusually clean signal: one channel, one trend line, very little residual noise.
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