DOL Data Shows Wage-and-Hour Progress, But What’s the Real Story?

Research by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Economic Policy Institute indicates millions of American workers are illegally underpaid. (Intentional or unintentional) employer misunderstanding, misinterpretation and/or misapplication of federal (as well as state) employment laws covering wages and hours are a primary cause of this issue.

Recent data from the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) shows employer violations remain a problem area, even though trend lines are heading in the right direction for:

• “All acts” total compliance actions and related back wages recovered
• Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) total back wages recovered and total workers impacted
• FLSA subset back wages recovered and workers impacted for overtime, minimum wage or tipped wage violations

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Do Fewer Enforcement Officers Equate to Fewer Cases?

Research by the Workplace Justice Lab, a collaboration between Rutgers University and Northwestern University, pointed out that while many employers have increased their focus on compliance with labor laws, some of the recent improvements in the annual WHD enforcement data can be tied to decreased agency staffing over the past several years. The lab’s précis is that fewer enforcement officers lead to fewer enforcement cases.

According to a report released in May by the lab, “[The WHD has been] working with a skeleton staff of investigators for many years,” and as the result of 2025 staffing cuts tied to activities by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the researchers say the problem has gotten worse.

The report stated that WHD’s investigator headcount in May was 611 — the lowest total since “at least 1973” and less than half the investigators the agency had at its 1978 peak.

“Insufficient staffing could hinder enforcement of existing wage protections and lead to more wage theft,” the report concluded.

“Wage theft is rife in industries that already pay too little to live on,” said Janice Fine, a director at the Workplace Justice Lab and one of the report’s co-authors. “When government is starved of enforcement resources, it is too easy for unscrupulous employers to commit flagrant violations of labor and employment laws.”

According to the lab, at least 4 million workers are illegally paid below the minimum wage each year, costing each victim an average of $3,000 annually and totaling more than $13 billion nationwide. It stated, “Total losses from wage theft consistently outpace total losses from property theft, yet the resources for labor standards enforcement do not fit the scale of the crime.”

Additional research findings from the Workplace Justice Lab include:

• Current WHD staffing amounts to one investigator to every 278,000 workers and 20,000 establishments. However, it said, an undisclosed number of investigators have accepted a deferred resignation from the Trump administration and stopped working, so “the true number is even lower.”
• WHD investigators are unevenly employed throughout the 50 states relative to each state’s population. It found that, in Maine, Maryland and Washington, there is just one investigator for every 500,000 workers. There are no WHD investigators based in Delaware, Montana, Vermont or Wyoming, so investigators must travel from other states.

Economic Policy Institute research pointed to the widespread impacts of wage-and-hour noncompliance and non-enforcement, stating, “Wage theft does not just harm the workers and families who directly suffer exploitation; it also weakens the bargaining power of workers more broadly by putting downward pressure on hourly wages in affected industries and occupations. For many low-income families who suffer wage theft, the resulting loss of income forces them to rely more heavily on public assistance programs, unduly straining safety net programs and hamstringing efforts to reduce poverty.”

A Deep Dive into the WHD Data

With all that as a backdrop, the following tables provide WHD enforcement data over the past five fiscal years (2020 through 2024). Data is broken down by compliance area as well as by industry sector.

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