Linked here, you will find a Decision that defies all common sense and logic, but highlights the lengths to which the DOL and the Board will go to demand strict compliance with the letter of the law.

In the Weck case, the Board upheld a denial based on a discrepancy where the offered job paid 80 cents per year than the prevailing wage determination would have required. On its face, this is crazy. While I understand the interest in holding to the precise language of the law and the Board’s general unwillingness to create a test to determine what is or is not “substantial compliance” with the legal requirement, we’re talking about about less than 4 pennies per pay period.

With that said, a couple comments:

In many positions, it behooves the employer to request an hourly determination and make the offer on that basis. This helps in making sure the prevailing wage is complied with because these are always issued down to the penny.
If you’re doing simultaneous recruitment while awaiting the wage determination, it is usually best to make sure the offer is not at the bare minimum, if at all possible, because the DOL wage data can flip over to the next year while you’re awaiting the determination and then mess up the recruitment (ie. too low a wage listed on the Notice of Filing posted at the worksite).
There have been past decisions at odds with how this one came out, for whatever that’s worth (not much to the employer and employee here, of course).