Stagnant Minimum Pay Eroding DOL’s Ability to Fight Wage Theft

As the gap widens between the federal minimum wage and what workers are earning under higher state rates, the US Department of Labor’s means of punishing employers who stiff their staff on pay shrinks.

Wage violations—sometimes dubbed “wage theft” by worker advocates—can occur in multiple ways. Employers may intentionally or unintentionally forget to pay for the full number of hours an employee worked, or impermissibly deduct fees for things like uniforms from a worker’s paycheck.

In these cases, workers who are paid more than the federal rate of $7.25 an hour are often out of luck when it comes to ...