DOL’s recovery of back wages for violations under the Fair Labor Standards Act has dropped to its lowest level in a decade, according to limited enforcement data reported by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. The amount of back wages collected by WHD decreased by 4% in fiscal year 2024 compared with the amount collected in FY 2023. In addition, the number of employees receiving back wages in FY 2024 decreased by about 7% from the year before, the agency reported.
For a second consecutive year, WHD limited its FLSA statistical release to back wages data. The agency disclosed only the amount of monetary benefits collected by the agency and the numbers of employees receiving these monetary benefits, broken down into minimum wage, overtime, retaliation, and tip-related categories. WHD failed to disclose both the number of closed overtime cases and the number of closed minimum wage cases as it did for the years before FY 2023.
The Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), our affiliated nonprofit membership association, prepared a chart of FLSA enforcement activity undertaken by WHD over the past ten years.
CWC members can read more here.