Naturalized U.S. citizen This is largely because workers with lower educational attainment make up a disproportionate share of low-wage workers. If these workers are employed 52 weeks per year, this amounts to losses of $3,800 on paid wages of only $9,300 annually. As shown in Figure K, over 14 percent of all workers in food and drink service (one out of every seven) report being paid less than the minimum wage. 2012). The data underlying the figure. Just under 4 percent receive housing subsidies, and 3.4 percent receive home energy assistance. $69 For employees to be considered victims of minimum wage violations, those employees must be paid at an hourly wage rate less than the legal minimum, although they need not be paid on an hourly basis. Black-White Wage Gaps Expand with Rising Wage Inequality. window.chartinfo = window.chartinfo || {};chartinfo[125589] = {"id":"125589","title":"Shares by usual weekly work hours of workers experiencing minimum wage violations","type":"bar","yAxisTitle":"","yAxisMin":"","yAxisMax":"100","yAxis2Title":"","yAxis2Min":"","yAxis2Max":"","yAxisVisibility":"hide","yAxis2Visibility":"","xAxis":[{"xAxisTitle":"","xAxisMultipleTitles":false,"xAxisUnits":"","plotBands":"","xAxisPlotBands":"","visibility":"show","type":""}],"legend":{"position":"outside-top","enabled":true,"title":{"text":null},"align":"center","verticalAlign":"top","floating":false,"defaultOffset":{"x":{"left":60,"right":-50},"y":{"top":5,"bottom":-40}},"layout":"horizontal","orderBy":""},"showDataLabels":"show","showFirstDataLabel":null,"showLastDataLabel":null,"decimalPlaces":"","height":"","heightAdjustment":"80","epiCharts":{"showScatterLabels":false,"showScatterMarkers":true,"showRegressionLine":"","showRegressionEquation":"","regressionLabel":"","regressionSlope":"","regressionIntercept":""},"plotOptions":{"bar":{"stacking":"normal"}}} Download dataThe data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. 2012. Note: Full-year annual wages are calculated by multiplying weekly wages by 52 weeks per year. Shares by usual weekly work hours of workers experiencing minimum wage violations For example, Gordon et al. Information Press. $225 Minimum Wage Tracker. Teresa Kroeger is a research assistant supporting EPIs research on labor economics. Employers refusing to pay promised wages, paying less than legally mandated minimums, failing to pay for all hours worked, or not paying overtime premiums deprives working people of billions of dollars annually. By definition, minimum wage violations withhold earnings from the lowest-paid workers in society, who typically are the least able to afford a loss of income. Download image, Share of each work hours group experiencing minimum wage violations Thus, we mark as exempt from the FLSA 3 percent of workers in those industries that can include seasonal amusement and recreational establishment workers: independent artists, performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries; museums, art galleries, historical sites, and similar institutions; bowling centers; other amusement, gambling, and recreation industries; and recreational vehicle parks, camps, and rooming and boarding houses. Transportation and utilities The data underlying the figure. 6.8% Share of workforce demographic experiencing minimum wage violations 29.2% The higher violation rate among noncitizens is not surprising, as workers who lack the protections of citizenship are more easily exploited. U.S. Department of Labor (U.S. DOL). In 2015, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Laborthe agency responsible for investigating minimum wage violationsemployed roughly the same number of investigators as it did nearly 70 years ago: WHD employed 1,000 investigators in 1948 and fewer than 1,000 in 2015 (Galvin 2016a; U.S. DOL 2017a). This figure is even more shocking when considered as a share of the low-wage workforce in Florida: the data suggest that one out of every four low-wage workers in Florida is a victim of wage theft. Wage theft in Australia is systemic, sustained and shameful and workers are Note:Weekly amount paid represents the average weekly wages received by workers experiencing minimum wage violations. According to a 2021 analysis by the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, the value of the top On January 1, 2017, Californias state minimum wage was raised to $10.50 per hour. The amount of annual wages lost to minimum wage violations for nonwhite workers totals $4 billion per year. It is beyond the scope of this report to assess the efficiency of spending public dollars to fight one form of crime versus another; however, our findings should raise questions among lawmakers as to whether adequate resources are being dedicated to ensuring the economic security of Americans not just in public and in their homes, but at their jobs. Those workers that are employed 52 weeks per year lose $3,300 on average each year and have average annual wages of only $11,300 for men and $9,900 for women. Examples of wage theft include paying less than minimum wage, not paying workers overtime, not allowing workers to take meal and rest breaks, requiring off-the-clock work, or taking workers' tips. 2015. Moreover, the FLSA and most state tipped wage laws do not specify the period over which weekly tips are supposed to be calculated, nor do they specify how employers are to treat secondary tippingwhen tipped workers share a portion of their tips with support staff. As noted in the body of this report, accurately measuring minimum wage violations is challenging, and even the best public data sourcessuch as the CPS-ORG data we usecontain measurement error that can confound results. Yet today, the agency is expected to protect a workforce nearly six times larger than it did in the 1940s22.6 million in 1948 and more than 135 million in 2015 (Galvin 2016a; U.S. DOL 2017b). As shown in Table 1, workers suffering minimum wage violations report being paid, on average, $1.88 per hour less than the applicable state or federal minimum wage. Low-wage workers are more likely to be vulnerable to minimum wage violations relative to the workforce in general, but those within the low-wage workforce are not necessarily more likely to experience minimum wage violations at a higher rate than other low-wage earners in their respective demographic categories. $173 COLORADO MINIMUM WAGE: DENVER MINIMUM WAGE (see 2021 Local Minimum Wage Report)* Year: Full Minimum Wage: with tip credit for tipped employees: 2023: $13.65 at least $10.63: $17.29: 2022 $12.56 at least $9.54: $15.87: Guidance on applying minimum wage (INFO #1) * & tips (INFO #3) * *Italicized text links to the referenced documents Single parents are underpaid by an average of $69 per week, which amounts to an average of $3,600 each year for those that work 52 weeks per year. Raising the Minimum Wage to $12 by 2020 Would Lift Wages for 35 Million American Workers. UNODCs 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, released in January 2023, notes that the percentage of boys identified as victims of human trafficking more than quintupled between 2004 and 2020 a much larger increase than for men, women, or girls. As the number of investigators per worker has shrunk, so has the agencys ability to effectively police violations of labor law: from 1980 to 2015, the number of cases investigated by the agency decreased by 63 percent (NELP 2008; U.S. DOL various years). In fact, the majority of workers with reported wages below the minimum wage are over 25 and are native-born U.S. citizens, nearly half are white, more than a quarter have children, and just over half work full time. 4.1% 2. Many authorized immigrant workers may have family or friends who lack authorization; they may fear retribution against their community if they speak out against abuse. A flag waves on Maryland Avenue in Annapolis, near the State House. As discussed in Bivens et al. 14.3% In most states and under federal law, employers of workers who customarily receive tipssuch as restaurant servers and nail salon attendantsmay credit workers tips against their required minimum wage. Florida Minimum Wage History: 2000 to 2017. State of Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. 5. Public surveys that collect wage and hour information do not capture the requisite information to assess wage theft in all the ways it can occur. The Current Employment Statistics (CES) program produces detailed industry The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors. in economics and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. window.chartinfo = window.chartinfo || {};chartinfo[125521] = {"id":"125521","title":"Average paid and unpaid weekly wages of workers experiencing minimum wage violations, by age","type":"column","yAxisTitle":"","yAxisMin":"","yAxisMax":"300","yAxis2Title":"","yAxis2Min":"","yAxis2Max":"","yAxisVisibility":"show","yAxis2Visibility":"","xAxis":[{"xAxisTitle":"","xAxisMultipleTitles":false,"xAxisUnits":"","plotBands":"","xAxisPlotBands":"","visibility":"show","type":""}],"legend":{"position":"hidden","enabled":false,"title":{"text":null},"defaultOffset":{"x":{"left":60,"right":-50},"y":{"top":5,"bottom":-40}},"layout":"vertical","orderBy":""},"showDataLabels":"show","showFirstDataLabel":null,"showLastDataLabel":null,"decimalPlaces":"","height":"","heightAdjustment":"-70","epiCharts":{"showScatterLabels":false,"showScatterMarkers":true,"showRegressionLine":"","showRegressionEquation":"","regressionLabel":"","regressionSlope":"","regressionIntercept":""},"plotOptions":{"column":{"stacking":"normal"}}}ChartData Download dataThe data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. 4.5% 2015. Their lost wages amount to about $64 per week on average weekly earnings of only $203meaning that victims are losing nearly one-quarter of their weekly earnings to wage theft. Carr (2015) notes that numerous studies find that 10 to 20 percent of employers have misclassified a worker as an independent contractor. Our findings, thus, seem to corroborate Galvins conclusion that the strength of a states labor laws and its enforcement capacity do have a significant impact on the likelihood that employers will commit wage theft. Over two-thirds (69 percent) of minimum wage violations in the agriculture industry take place in California, where all agriculture workers are entitled to the state minimum wage. Yet to produce such a report, the researchers conducted their own survey of front-line workers in three major metropolitan areas; this survey was specially designed to capture evidence of multiple forms of wage theft. Similarly, many salaried white-collar workers whose duties are deemed executive, administrative, or professional, and whose pay is above a set threshold, are excluded from the overtime provisions of the law.